


With Benefits

by baixue88



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Codependency, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Non-Consensual Spanking, Older Man/Younger Woman, Personal Growth, Secret Relationship, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:04:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 28,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baixue88/pseuds/baixue88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Korra and Tarrlok enter into a clandestine bargain.  No blackmail, no telling, and no hurt feelings.  This is an amicable agreement between allies, and that is all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided from the beginning that I'm going to try to stick as closely as possible to the canon storyline of Book 1 with this fic. One major thing that has been changed, however, is the length of time between major events. Since Book 1 went so quickly, it appeared necessary to stretch it out a little.

It had been only two days, and Korra hated herself.  She hated herself for giving into his persistent advances, for joining him in the shower room after the rest of the task force had long gone home, for enjoying every last minute of their time together.  He hadn’t been her first, of course.  She’d never give someone like him her first time.  But it had been a couple of years, after all, and, she’d rationalized, a girl has needs, right?

So she’d joined him in the showers, and as the warm water sprayed down on both of them, she’d heard her own moans echo off the tile walls.

She thought, after that, that she was satisfied.  That it was finished.  She’d gotten it out of her system, given in for one debauched evening, had her fun.  And with a man twice her age.  Her mother would have a fit if she knew.

But now, two nights later, she was lying awake and listening to the rain patter against her bedroom windows and she remembered the sound of the water hitting the tile and her own gasps as he rocked up against her like the tide on the rocks –

 _Son of a bitch_.

Ten minutes later, she was on her personal little boat heading away from Air Temple Island, bending her way swiftly and deftly through the waves and rain.  She had no fear, like Tenzin did, of travelling the waters in a storm. 

As soon as she hit land, she hailed a cab.  She knew where his villa was, and paid the driver extra to keep his mouth shut and not ask any questions.  She could afford it.  This once.

It was well past midnight when she arrived.  The doorman would certainly have gone to bed by now, but that didn’t much bother her.  She was a great climber, and made her way in and up the wall with no trouble, earth-bending out little footholds as needed.  It was easy to tell which room was his bedroom – just find the spot on an upper floor with the best view.  Sure enough, as she peered through the window, she could see him alone in an extravagantly decorated room, looking so strangely small in his large bed.

She slipped the window open quietly, and just as quietly rid herself of her wet clothes before slipping under the silken sheets beside him.

He awoke as soon as he felt the extra pressure upon the mattress.

“This is breaking and entering,” he mumbled, sleep still clinging to him and making everything hazy.

“Deal with it.”  She was straddling him now, one hand yanking down his waistband and the other balanced on his chest for support.

“And this could probably be considered sexual assault.”

“Bring me up on charges, then, councilman.”  She shifted her weight, and he was awake enough now to help her find her way. 

He let out a low laugh.

“Shut up,” she muttered, and he conceded. 

There was no noise after that except for the soft creaking of the bedframe, and the sound of the rain.  Their climax was swallowed up in thunder.  He could see her, suddenly illuminated in the lightning, glowing and glorious and terrible as any Avatar out of legend.

And then it was dark again, and she was an exhausted girl in his arms.

“Get some rest,” he murmured to her.  She said nothing, lying there on top of him, and so he let sleep embrace him once again.

When Tarrlok next opened his eyes, his bed was empty, the window was open, and the sun was shining in to dry the rain up off the ruined carpet.


	2. Chapter 2

For two weeks, Korra did not speak to him.

She went to task force meetings, of course.  Occasionally, he’d ask her a question in front of everyone, and she’d answer, but would only say as much as was necessary, nothing more.  She refused to look at him unless she had to, and even then she avoided looking him in the eyes, instead directing her gaze at his chin or his left ear.

At first, he seemed amused, and he would shoot her secret smirks when no one was looking, assuming she was upset for some sort of silly, girlish reason that – naturally – he could not be blamed for.  But as her stony silence progressed into a second week, his smirks began to disappear, though he still tried to catch her eye every time he thought no one else was looking.

Finally, he caved.  He caught her at the end of a debriefing session in the hall outside his office.  She was pulling on her jacket and chatting with the Xu twins – a stocky set of earth-bending sisters who shared a brash, vulgar sense of humor that always made Tarrlok wince and Korra shriek with laughter.

“Avatar Korra,” he sidled up to her (placing one hand on her elbow to let her know, from the outset, that there was no escaping this), “would you mind staying a few minutes afterward?  I have a few things I’d like to discuss.”

Da Xu (the eldest twin) wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at Korra, only to be sneered at by the Avatar and elbowed hard in the stomach by Xiao Xu.  “Don’t worry about it, Korra,” Xiao Xu said, “we’ll wait up for you at Jiang’s Pub, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Korra, who wasn’t bothering in the least to mask her disappointment at this turn of events.  Tarrlok, nonplussed, remained at her side with his hand resting gently on her upper arm, an ever-diplomatic smile upon his face.  Korra sighed, and repeated, “Yeah, sounds great,” before resignedly shrugging her jacket back off her shoulders and following Tarrlok into his office.

 —

Tarrlok shut the doors firmly behind them, and went to sit on the edge of his desk, Korra grudgingly at his heels.  For a long while he looked at her, silent, the only noise in the room the soothing sound of the waterfall on the wall behind him.  Korra stood stonily in front of him, her blue eyes focused directly at his chin.

“Korra,” he said after a moment, “look at me.”

“I  _am_  looking at you.”

“Don’t be a child.  You know what I mean.”

She let out a long, slow sigh, and moved her eyes up to meet his.

“Why are you angry with me?”

For a split second she actually looked startled, and then quickly rearranged her features back into her stony stare.  “I’m not angry at you.”

“Yes you are.  You’ve avoided having anything more than necessary to do with me for at least two weeks now.  What in the hell is going on?”  He smiled a little.  “I thought we left off on a fairly… _friendly_  note.”

“There was nothing friendly about it!” She snapped, and it was Tarrlok’s turn to be surprised.

“Well,” he said after another long moment of silence, “you  _did_  sneak into my room, strip naked, and crawl into my bed.  I’m not sure how they do things in the South, but around here we regard that as pretty friendly.”

“It was an itch that needed scratching,” she whispered.  Her eyes were on his chin again.  “That’s all.”

Tarrlok nodded, looking her over.  She was standing stiff and upright, her feet placed a shoulder’s width apart, her arms crossed firmly over her chest.  She never stopped impressing, not even at her most defensive.

“That’s fine,” he said at last, and he caught the flash of her blue eyes flicking up to look at his before returning to focus on his chin.  “I really don’t mind that.  I just wish you’d made that clear.”

“I thought I’d been making it pretty clear the past couple weeks.  What happened between us meant nothing.”

“Then why are you avoiding me like this?”

She sniffed and looked away, tossing her head in impatience.  “Didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Well, I did.”  Tarrlok could hardly help but smile at the petulant frown that was now creasing her brow and turning her full lips down in a pout.  “And listen, Korra, if you ever need to scratch that itch again…”

The pout dropped from her lips, and she looked sideways at him, her eyes narrowed.  “And if I do?” she ventured, “you won’t hold it over my head?”

“Believe me, considering my position, you have a lot more to hold over _mine_.  If it comes to that.”  He leaned back, unable now to suppress the grin that he could feel spreading across his features.  “Really, though.  I won’t hold it over your head.  I want an amicable working relationship, the same as before.  With, if you like, mutual itch-scratching.”

She met his gaze with her own now.  Held it long and steady.  Finally, she sighed, and nodded in agreement.  He held out his hand to shake on it, but she stepped forward and shoved his hand out of the way.

“Kiss on it,” she murmured as she leaned in, and he did.  He could taste the stale tang of her dinner on her lips, but he didn’t much care, because her warm chest was pressed up against his, and when he slipped his tongue into her mouth she went along happily, reaching up to lace her fingers into his hair.  It was only when he tried to pull her even closer, to slide one hand up from her waist to cup her breast, that she danced away out of his grasp, a wily smile glittering in her eyes.

“I said  _kiss_  on it,” she teased, backing towards the door, “not anything else.”  Then, as an afterthought: “Old pervert.”

He tried to look indignant but in the end, he couldn’t help it – he laughed.  She grinned freely at him, perhaps for the first time, and spirited herself out the door as quick as a cricket, leaving Tarrlok staring at the door for a moment before he laid backward onto his desk and upset a pile of papers.

“ _Damn_ ,” he said to the ceiling.


	3. Chapter 3

She was wary at first.  It was only natural.  Even though Tarrlok had promised her complete confidentiality, she knew she had to take things slowly.  He had lured her right into agreeing to be on his task force, after all – smoothly setting her up right in the papparazzi’s  line of fire so that she would have no choice but to join him, just to prove she wasn’t a coward.  When he had tried manipulating her once again, that night in the showers, she had been wise enough to see what he was doing.  At that point, though, it had come down to a moment of weakness.

But still, she had enjoyed herself then, and again a couple nights later, and now she was enjoying the fruits of that momentary lapse in judgment to the fullest extent.  By some miracle, Tarrlok was not making any efforts whatsoever to use their regular rendezvous to his benefit – at least, not any more than she was.  It was as if he didn’t regard these semi-regular meetings as a weakness on her part at all.  He was, to Korra’s pleasant surprise, upholding his end of the bargain: what went on between the sheets remained there, with no effects on his treatment of her outside.  (Except, of course, the notes he occasionally accepted from her on the sly, or the way he sometimes squeezed her upper arm as he passed, his knuckles just barely grazing the side of her breast).

His servants had to know.  There was no way they didn’t.  How he managed to keep them silent on the subject, Korra didn’t want to find out – she preferred, in fact, not to think about it.  At first, whenever she made her nighttime visits to his villa, she scaled the walls quietly and screamed out her orgasms into a pillow.  But now, she entered through a side door (it could never have been the front door, not in a million years, but it was a door and that was  _something_ ) and when he made her come she threw her head back and howled it into the open air and relished the way he looked at her when she did.

It was terrible behavior, especially for the Avatar.  But when she had been struggling all day to synchronize her  _qi_  with the air only to have it slip through her fingers once again, it was bliss to escape from Tenzin’s worried frown into Tarrlok’s lavish king-sized bed. 

When she had watched, only a few days previously, as Asami pulled up on her moped to drop a flushed and disheveled Mako off at practice (and this had so distracted her that she had been pushed from the ring within the first two minutes), it was a spiteful little thrill inside to know that she could rotate her hips in such a way that the Councilman’s perfectly groomed political veneer crumbled into dust.  That same night she had made Tarrlok arch his back and let out a rasping scream so utterly desperate that she feared for a moment he might have a heart attack right there beneath her.  But he recovered quick enough and thanked her with a quick, friendly peck on the lips before she snuck home, praying all the while that Tenzin would not notice the lingering smell of spiced vanilla cologne on her clothes.

It was terrible behavior, especially for the Avatar, and the thought of this sent a delicious shiver down her spine every time. 

It just felt  _so good_ not to care.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: memories of abuse

“Your nose is a little bit crooked,” Korra said suddenly.  She was perched in the corner of his Jacuzzi-style bathtub and had been studying his face as the two of them sat and enjoyed the warm, bubbling water (pumped in via aquaduct straight from the nearest hot spring, he had been quick to inform her), her expression simultaneously lazy and thoughtful.  All her hair was pulled up in a messy bun on the top of her head to keep it from getting wet, and it made her face look rounder than usual.  He hated these little signs of her age – as much as he liked to tell himself that he was beyond caring about such moralistic little quibbles, the reminder that she was but a girl grated on him. 

He sank lower into the water.

“Korra, I’m trying to enjoy my bath, and you should be, too.  You’re filthy.”

(She had stumbled in, bristling like a wet cat, after a long and frustrating pro-bending practice in which, he had gathered from her grumbling and swearing, she had gotten into a fight over tactics with the same team-mate who had slept with some other girl only a week previously.  He hadn’t been able to gather if Korra’s rival had been the reason for this fight or not, but from the way Korra spoke about this Mako boy (when she did speak about him), it probably was.  Most men would have been jealous, but that, in Tarrlok’s mind, was ridiculous.  After all, it wasn’t Mako who was, on a fairly regular basis, teasing Korra until she shrieked out pleas for more, was it?

In any case, the practice had been brutal and the fight had been worse, and when Korra finally arrived at Tarrlok’s she had reeked of stale sweat and had very clear stains on the armpits of her shirt and the base of her back.  She’d tried to jump into Tarrlok’s bed almost immediately, but he had stopped her.

“What?  It’s just sweat!”  She’d protested.

“That’s my  _bed_ , Korra.  I  _sleep_  there.”

“We’ve put worse on your bed,” she’d grumbled, but had grudgingly agreed to take a bath.  She’d cheered up when he’d agreed to join her, and could hardly contain her excitement when he revealed that his bath was a large, stone Jacuzzi set directly in his floor.  Showing off, Tarrlok had always known, has its benefits.)

“Seriously,” she prodded, an indolent smile spreading across her face, “why is your nose bent like that?  Did you break it when you were a kid?”  A note of excitement colored her voice.  “Did you get in a  _fight_?”

Tarrlok glanced away briefly, suddenly and irrationally afraid of letting her look into his eyes, because if he closed them he could still see his father’s fist coming at him and feel the blood flow warm and sticky and the terror of wondering if it would ever stop.

“Something like that,” he murmured.

“Really?  Did you get in a lot of fights when you were a kid?” 

He clenched his jaw and, not for the first time, hated her.  She was so persistent, so undaunted, so stubborn, so very like himself, and sometimes it pissed him off to no end.

“Leave it, Korra.”

“But I wanna know-”

“I said  _leave_  it!”  His hand shot out under the water, quick as a snake-strike, to grab her wrist tight, to yank her towards him, to show her he was serious.

Pinned against him now, Korra was staring up at him, her blue eyes wide and bewildered, breathing heavily.  “ _Spirits_ , Tarrlok,” she whispered after a while, “calm  _down_.”

Tarrlok forced his jerky breaths back into a steady rhythm, and slowly loosened his grip on her wrist.  Her large breasts were pressed up against his chest, he realized, and she was straddling his leg.  He discovered that all of this helped, and so he released her wrist completely so that he could lean down and kiss her bare chest and force away the memory of blood streaming down over his mouth and chin.  Korra seemed to feel the change in him, and gladly accepted what she had come here for in the first place, arching her back to make herself more accessible to his caresses.

He turned her around, pushed her halfway out of the tub, pressed her chest down onto the stone tiling so that her legs were still in the water, and took her.  It came to him, as he looked down to see her brown face pushed against the wet stone, that this was the first time he’d tried sex in a Jacuzzi with a fellow water-bender.  The energy he’d noticed in the showers during their first escapade was even stronger here, as her  _qi_  merged with the water in the tub and up into him and he into her, the two of them united in flesh and in water at the same time and that addictive, powerful  _qi_ -flow – the kind only an Avatar could generate – running through all of it like a current and electrifying the whole room.

It was too much, and he came quicker than he meant to. 

She remained lying on the cool stone, and turned herself over to look up at him, her brown skin wet and gleaming.  Her hair had come out of its bun and spilled freely over her shoulders.  She looked like a siren.  “Feel better?”

He stared down at her, his left hand gently cradling her hip, and nodded.  “Yeah.”

—

Tarrlok didn’t know if she meant for it to happen, but after they had dried off, she crawled – clean and fresh – into bed beside him and stayed, combing out the tangles in his hair with her fingers, until the first rays of sunlight peeked over the eastern horizon.


	5. Chapter 5

Korra couldn’t help but feel a bit small when she arrived at the front gates of the Tian Qi Gym.  Sure, she had been training regularly –  _well, not as much these days_ , she thought with a twinge of guilt – at the pro-bending arena, but that was a little different.  That gym, where she and Mako and Bolin exercised side by side, was created especially for professional athletes, with nothing but the material a bender needed and the space to work comfortably.  That was home.  This was…well… _grandiose_.

She walked up to the sign at the front, detailing all the services.  One grand arena and twelve smaller ones.  A spa, complete with massage therapy and sauna.  A luxury-size pool with multiple hot tubs.  Acupressure specialists.  A top-notch café with menus especially prepared to boost your  _qi_  depending upon your element.

“Spirits,” Korra muttered to herself, forcing a smile and a polite, stiff nod to the doorman who let her in and the fit, almost overly-healthy looking woman in a gleaming white qipao who bowed and took her boots, welcoming Korra graciously into the high-end gym.  Awed, the Avatar looked around.  The floor was so clean, she doubted whether a speck of dust had ever been permitted to land on it.  The walls, when not a simple and pristine white marble, had built-in waterfalls like the one in Tarrlok’s office at the city hall.  Korra couldn’t begin to imagine how much even one of those had to cost.

She didn’t have much time to pause and look around her, though.  Before she knew it, another lovely young woman with blindingly white teeth had arrived to guide her, personally, to the locker rooms.

 

“Councilman Tarrlok has already arrived and is warming up in the private arena he has rented.  He tells us that you’ve already mastered earth, so we brought you exercise disks, and we ask that you use those instead of any stone from the walls, floors, or ceiling in your practice.  If you need a boost in fire- _qi_ , we have supplied torches on the walls.”

They were suddenly at the locker room doors, and Korra discovered that she hadn’t been paying attention to how they got there at all, she had been so distracted by the attendant’s rapid-fire speech.

She opened her mouth, but before she could ask anything, the attendant was talking again: “The door to the arenas is on the other side of the locker rooms.  You and the Councilman are in arena five.  Here is the key to your locker-” (she pressed a little metal key on a chain ornamented with the gym’s leaf logo into Korra’s palm) “-so that you can get changed into the work-out clothes we have provided for you.  Have a good time, and let us know if we can do anything else for you.”  The attendant shot Korra a dazzling-white grin, and disappeared the way they had come.

—

“This place is a bit…sanitary.”  Korra entered arena five to find Tarrlok warming up with a simple water kata, the liquid swirling around him like an aura.   He was dressed in a simple white cotton pair of pants and shirt – a man’s version of the same set of pressed, airy clothes Korra had found in her locker.

“Most of the clients this gym caters to are wealthy benders who desire a specific  _look_.”  Tarrlok turned swiftly on his heel and passed the water to Korra, who whipped it over her head, around her back, and sent it flying into the fountain at the opposite side of the little arena.  He smiled at her, impressed, and started the kata again, this time without the water.  “For the upper-crust of RepublicCity, the presentation and the service matter just as much as the quality.  You need to learn that, if you want to have any success around here.”

Korra stretched briefly and joined him, mirroring his movements carefully.  “And I assume you’re going to teach me?”

“If you’ll have me,” he said, and Korra knew that was a ‘yes’ – she could hear the smug confidence brimming up in every note of his voice.  “But,” he continued, “I’m not going to give you etiquette lessons today.  I just wanted to practice with you.  See how well  _I_  match up to  _you_.”  Korra knew he meant that last bit the other way around, but let it slide with an indulgent eyeroll.

“So,” she broke off into a fire kata as he continued his water (she allowed herself a little joy in watching him watch her), “you rented a private arena at the fanciest bending gym in town, just to practice with me?”

“The Avatar deserves the best.”

 “Well, at least you didn’t buy me a car this time.”

Tarrlok’s mouth fell open, and there was a hitch in his exercises for a moment before he continued, with slightly less grace.  “You ungrateful brat!  Any girl in this city would be  _overjoyed_  to get a car.”

“Tarrlok, I  _don’t know how to drive_.”

His offense quickly changed to incredulity.  “You mean  _nobody_  in the Southern Water Tribe uses cars, even in this day and age?”

“Katara brought one with her when she moved back home from RepublicCity.”  Korra moved on to earth kata now.  “Sometimes when the men go whaling, she uses it to help them drag the whale carcass back to the village.”

Tarrlok had to give up on his kata – he was laughing too hard.

—

Tarrlok’s grace astounded at her at first.  He danced across the arena, ducking out of the way of her attacks, and at times sending them right back to her.  Korra, used to bending multiple elements from such an early age, had never quite become so deeply intimate with one element like that.  He was fluid, following the path of least resistance like floodwater over rock, adapting to everything she could manage to throw at him and molding himself to fit the weaknesses in her defense.  Even as she switched pell-mell between water, earth, and fire, Tarrlok was flowing between the cracks and identifying each fissure.  Before she knew it, he was flinging bolts of ice at her, and when one struck her leg she noted gratefully that he had even blunted them so as not to cut her.

The ice bolts kept flying, so Korra darted away to get close enough to call over one of the larger practice earth disks and float it before her as a shield.  Just as quick, Tarrlok had shifted his position to attack her flank, and when she flung the disk at him, he whipped up a current around himself so strong that it flung the disk away and shattered it against the ceiling, raining rock down on both of them.  Korra hardly noticed – Tarrlok had used her surprise at his strength to spring forward and tackle her to the ground, sealing her ankles and wrists down with ice in a formal gesture of victory.

“You need to learn not to underestimate people, Avatar Korra.”  He was panting from the exertion and vibrating with energy, his blue eyes sparkling with it. 

“Oh believe me, I’m learning,” she gasped, and with a wicked smile she rolled her hips up a little so that her groin brushed against his.  “Looks like your bending skills aren’t the only thing you want to work out, Councilman.  I had the  _strangest_  feeling this was more than just practice for you.”

He let out a little  _humph_ , but wasn’t quite able to hide the twinkle of a smile in his eyes.  “Fight well, little Avatar, and we might be able to move onto other exercises.”  With a flick, he released her from the ice, and leapt off and back from Korra as she sprang to her feet, fire blazing up out of her lungs.  She followed his lead back across the arena, her arms and legs and head all ablaze with flame, forcing Tarrlok onto the defensive as he struggled not to be pinned to the wall.  He was flinging up water shields, and these sizzled and turned to steam as she met him evenly with flame.

Then, just as she was about to have him forced against the wall, he flung up one more shield and ducked around her, at the same time slamming her in the back with a wall of water that immediately drenched her flames and forced her to her knees.  Immediately he was behind her, kneeling with her, his chest pressed up against her back as he wrapped his strong arms around her middle.

“Good.”  His breath brushed warm against her ear and she shivered.  “Very good, Avatar.  But you still expect everyone else to be just as honest in their fighting as you.”

“So does this count as RepublicCity etiquette?” She mumbled.  His strong arms held her tight against him, one of his hands getting dangerously close to the waistband of her pants.

“Consider it the beginning of your official education,” he said softly, and Korra tried not to gasp as his hand slipped into her pants.  “People here are going to play dirty, Korra.  You need to learn to think” (he moved his fingers and her head lolled back onto his shoulder as she bit her lip to keep in a scream) “like your enemy.”

Then, suddenly, he was letting her go, standing up, and moving toward the door, leaving her kneeling on the ground and gasping for air like a fool.

“Lesson one!” He called over his shoulder.

Korra flung an earth disk after him, and it shattered against the closing door.

 —

The next day, she went back to practicing with Mako and Bolin.


	6. Chapter 6

City Hall always emptied fairly quickly after sunset.  All the interns emptied out right away, eager to get back to their apartments and catch up on the latest bending matches or radio plays.  The lower-level civil servants left next, and so on, until the building was mostly dark and almost entirely silent.  The light that usually burned the longest was the lamp on Tarrlok’s desk – the only one he bothered to turn on when the sunlight streaming through his windows dimmed. 

His doctor had told him that he needed to turn on more lights in the evening, that if he continued to squint at papers written in cramped, tiny handwriting with only the desk lamp every night he would soon need glasses, but he could never really be bothered.  He liked the way the rest of his office settled into darkness, the same way as the rest of City Hall, as footsteps and voices faded into silence, leaving just the murmur of the waterfall behind him and the occasional light footsteps of his page bringing him more black tea.  The darkness was comforting – it had been dark so often up north when he was growing up, and darkness usually meant reprieve.

In the dark, it had been impossible to go out and practice.  It was too cold, without sunlight, to be outside.  Darkness had meant peace at home, in his mother’s lap, listening to her fairy stories (she even made up her own sometimes) and scribbling pictures of polar bear dogs with pieces of old charcoal.  Darkness was rest and quiet and real, actual peace while his father slept off raging hangovers in the back room.

It was those awful days – the days of midnight sun – that had been the real torture.  Out, at all hours of the night because there was no night and therefore no rest, just endless practice and pushing and  _pushing_  until perfection – a perfection he had never been able to reach.

And so he kept it dark now, as often as possible.  Let his eyes be ruined, let him be saddled with a pair of glasses one day soon.  Just allow it to be night-time, when the world could rest – except, of course, for him.  There were papers to read, minutes to review, speeches to write, edicts to mold into legal perfection.  Tarrlok had reached perfection – over and over again – but now it was on his own terms, using his true talent: that silver tongue he had inherited from his mother, though she had never learned to use hers like he used his.  She had never been willing to say anything to get everything.

Her loss.

—

It was quiet, for a very long time.  Tarrlok had dismissed his page an hour ago (or several – he wasn’t sure), thinking – at the time – that he was nearly finished.  But then he’d seen a loophole in the edict he was designing, and he’d had to go back and sew it tightly shut.  The tea was turning cold, and in the back of his mind he was contemplating sleeping late tomorrow morning (today?) and making a lame excuse to the rest of the council.  They’d be fine without him – fine, meaning entirely inept, and that was perfectly acceptable to Tarrlok.

The silence made Korra’s entrance perfectly audible, even from the floor above the main entrance.  She yelled out his name as soon as she burst in, as if expecting him to appear on command like a genie, but she apparently soon grew impatient with waiting, as before long he heard her heavy footsteps slam up the staircase and down the upper hall toward his office.

By the time she arrived, he had emptied his pen and was screwing the cap onto his ink jar – he could already tell there would be no more work for the evening.  He’d just come in early tomorrow and finish it.

She stormed up to his desk, slamming her hands on it (rather melodramatically), but he ignored her, carefully putting pen and ink back into their proper place inside his top drawer before finally looking up to meet her infuriated glare with an effortlessly impassive gaze.

“You ruined my life!” She spat out as soon as he met her eyes.  Her ears were an unattractive shade of red.

“I know I’m powerful, Korra, but I didn’t realize I was quite  _that_  powerful.  How in the world did I manage it?”  He had to work very hard to keep from laughing at her – the indignant expression on her face was absolutely _fantastic_.

“You-you!  You gave me shit advice, that’s what you did!”

“What ‘shit’ advice?”

“All that bull about ‘getting inside my enemy’s head,’” she quoted mockingly, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes at her.  “I tried it and all it did was make things even worse for me.”

Tarrlok finally let himself smile, and he leaned back in his chair, gesturing for her to come around the desk and sit down on his lap.  “Tell me.”

She came around his desk, but instead of sitting on his lap, she kicked off her boots and hopped up onto the desk itself and sat looking down at him, her feet balanced on his chair’s arm-rests.  He placed his hands gently on her ankles and rubbed them.  They seemed swollen under his touch – she had doubtlessly been at the pro-bending gym for hours on end, practicing for the match which (he suddenly remembered) was tomorrow.

“I tried it on that Mako guy I was telling you about, and at first it worked.  We kissed.”

He raised an eyebrow and smiled at her, feeling a sudden and strange rush of pride at her ingenuity.  He had pegged her as being too brash and guileless to consider viewing a love interest as an enemy to be conquered.  “Tell me what you did.”

“I…I went out with his brother.”

Tarrlok barked out a laugh, and Korra kicked him lightly on the arm.  “Don’t laugh!  It was a horrible thing to do.”  Shame filled her eyes.  “I’m an awful person.”

“You’re not an awful person.  You’re a smart person.”

“It  _was_  awful.  Bolin didn’t deserve that.”

“And yet it worked for you.”  Tarrlok settled back deeper into his chair, letting his muscles relax for the first time in hours.  This girl, this little pupil of his (he had, for a while, been privately thinking of her as such), was relaxing in  _the_  most delightful way when her anger was mollified and her stubbornness was circumvented.  “So, your guilt aside, what went wrong?  Mako got jealous, didn’t he?”

“He did, yeah, but he says he still likes Asami.  He says he likes us both equally.  And now his brother saw me kiss him and  _both_  of them are angry with me.”  Korra hung her head, putting her hands over her face.  “I’ve fucked everything up.  We’re going to lose tomorrow, just because of my meddling, and we’ve worked so  _hard_.”

Tarrlok shook his head.  “No.  Forget pro-bending for the moment.  Outside of winning at your tournaments, what do you want?”

Korra sighed.  “I want…I want Mako to dump that Asami girl.”

“And be with you instead.”

“Yes.”

“Then find out what his greatest weapon is, and disarm him.”

Korra frowned in confusion.  “His greatest weapon?”

“Yes.  And right now, his greatest weapon is the fact that  _you want him_.  Doesn’t matter if he knows it’s his greatest weapon – that’s what he has on you.”

She snorted.  “Right, and how am I supposed to disarm him?  Stop wanting him, just like that?”

“No, make him want  _you_.  Then you have an even match.  Even better, make him want you more than you want him.  Going on a date with his brother was a good start, though you likely botched that up when you kissed him.  Now he knows you want him.”

“Well, he kind of already knew.”

Tarrlok stopped rubbing her ankles.  “You told him?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed and shook his head.  Maybe she wasn’t as smart as she’d let on after all.  “Then you’re back to square one.”

“I’m not dating Bolin again.  That was one of the worst things I’ve ever done, to anybody.”

“You’re too soft, Avatar Korra.  You need to play hardball.”  Idly, he snaked one hand up her leg and leaned forward, reaching up to pull her down to kiss him.  She was too beautiful in the soft lamp-light, and with the magnificent wall of water behind him, he could feel her  _qi_  pulsing tantalizingly through the pulse in her ankles and reverberating into him.

Suddenly, he felt her foot on his chest, pushing her back into his chair and away from her.  Her blue eyes had taken on a cunning glint and she smirked down at him.

“Not so fast, bub.  You weren’t exactly too friendly to me last time in the arena, and I thought this agreement was all about  _friendliness_.”

Tarrlok raised his eyebrows.  “I wasn’t about to have sex with you in an arena where anyone could just look through the door and see us.  Do you think I’m crazy?”

“I think you’re a tease.”  Korra slowly moved her other foot over, placing it gently against his crotch.  Tarrlok gasped involuntarily, and she grinned.  “And I think you need a taste of your own medicine.”

Tarrlok could have pushed her feet aside and left, but he didn’t.  Instead, he sat there and let her hold him down with one foot while she, well, teased him with the other.  He did his best not to be moved, but eventually was forced to let out a small groan, the ache in his groin too great for him to keep it all in.  At this, she withdrew, and sat cross-legged on his desk smiling at him.

“Damn it, Korra, don’t stop now.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I’m…asking you not to.”  He had to fight the urge to grab her, to drag her down and force her onto his lap and make her continue.   _Spirits_ his pants were tight on him.

“Asking?  I didn’t hear you ask.”  She was smiling so serenely down at him,  _damn_  her.

“Fine.  Fine.  Korra, I’m asking you to continue.”

“That’s not a very polite way to ask.”

Tarrlok let out a long, shaky breath, glaring up at her, sweat dripping down his forehead.  “Korra,  _please_  let me continue.”

“Are you sorry for that time in the arena?”

“Yes, damn you, I’m sorry!” he nearly yelled.

Her smile turned into a positively infuriating grin, and she hopped down off the desk, leaning over his chair to give him a quick kiss. “I don’t like to play dirty, Tarrlok,” she whispered, “but if you  _ever_  try to manipulate me like you did again, I’m not afraid to manipulate right back, and don’t expect me to be so forgiving next time.”

Tarrlok growled and pulled her back down into a fierce embrace, yanking her fur shawl off and pulling down her pants before turning her around and shoving her onto the desk.  He slammed into her so hard that he knew she’d have bruises on her hips and thighs the next day where they made contact with the wood, but she only shrieked out a triumphant laugh, and he belatedly realized that, while he’d been lost in a haze of want, she’d taken his lesson to heart.

In the end, though, she had still been the first to cave - that first, chaotic, glorious time in the showers - and now, she was always the one to come back.

A pupil, however apt, could only ever have the upper hand for a short time.


	7. Chapter 7

The edge of the wooden desk dug into her flesh, but in some sick way, Korra relished the way she slammed into it, the sharp sting each time reminding her of the sheer immediacy of the situation, the reality of the cool wood under her fingers and Tarrlok’s hot breath on her ear and his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips.  Her shirt soon joined her pants, and she moaned, overwhelmed, at the new sensation of Tarrlok’s robes rubbing against her skin with each thrust of his body. 

Soon, though, she got tired of looking at nothing, of having to reach up behind her and flail blindly in order to even run her fingers through his hair, so at the next opportunity she neatly flipped herself over ( _not an easy move_ , she noted proudly) and reached up to loop her arms around his neck for a kiss.  When she opened her eyes again, he was glaring daggers at her, and she realized with a thrill that he’d wanted to have his way for the whole of it and that she’d managed, unknowingly, to undermine him once again. 

They peaked like that (him first and, within a stroke or two, her following), with his enraged blue eyes fixed upon hers, and then they both lay there still, his heavy body pinning her down on the smooth desk surface.  Korra let her head flop back onto the hard oak, breathing heavily from the exertion.  Bolin’s hurt, Mako’s fury, Asami’s untouchable beauty, Tahno’s ridiculous arrogance – all these things seemed so comfortingly far away from her, and Tarrlok around and inside of her, and the sweet song of the water on the wall behind him that made the  _qi_  come alive in their veins and quicken under her touch.

“Tarrlok.”  Korra reached up and ran a hand over his head and down to his broad shoulders.  “Spirits, Tarrlok, you’re  _shaking_.”

“You…make me… _so_  angry,” he panted, his words interspersed with light kisses down between her breasts.

“Good,” she sighed, losing herself in the sensation of his warm breath trembling out over her sweat-covered flesh as he lavished her in kisses and caresses.  He always displayed this sweetness at the most peculiar times – in their most anger-filled, violent sex, his orgasm would rip its way out of his lungs in a howl, and almost immediately afterwards he would become as docile and affectionate as a polar-bear-dog.  This always bemused Korra, but she allowed these things to pass without comment – the oddly tender afterglow was, in many ways, just as enjoyable for her as the candid brutality of the act itself. 

The first time it had happened, she’d lay awake all the next night terrified that it meant he had fallen in love with her.  Ten dozen situations ran through her mind, all equally horrible: Tarrlok proposing, Tarrlok trying to pressure her into eloping, Tarrlok arranging another gala and announcing their relationship to the whole damn city, Tarrlok  _actually trying to be her fucking_ boyfriend _in front of everyone and taking her on dates where Mako and Bolin and everybody-would-see-oh-spirits-_ no.

The nightmarish fantasies had kept her pinned to her bed, pale and sweating in horror as each one became successively more appalling and absurd, and she had been a wreck the entire next day until she next saw him at a task force practice session, when all fears disappeared as soon as he opened his venomous, flattery-filled mouth to both greet her and sneak in an underhanded insult at the same time.  Since then, she had taken his sudden lapses into this adoring-lover demeanor in a little more stride, allowing herself to at least relax and enjoy it after a rough and bruising fuck, just like a sweet bowl of ice cream after an extra-spicy dinner.

Tarrlok, spent and sated, withdrew from her and sat back down in his chair, a few stray hairs sticking to his forehead and his robes in relative disarray.  His eyes drifted down Korra’s body, exhausted but admiring, and she felt a thrill of wickedness at still being splayed, naked and drenched and reeking of sex, across the rich dark oak of the Councilman’s desk.  For the first time, she noticed a throbbing feeling in the skin and muscles on her upper thighs and pelvis, and she looked down to see dark bruises already blossoming across her skin where it had been repeatedly slammed against the desk’s edge.  He had left bruises on her plenty of times before (and she had left a good deal in return), but this was the most she’d ever seen in one sitting.

Tarrlok let out a sigh of satisfaction and tucked himself away before re-buttoning his trousers and smoothing his hair back away from his face.  He reached up and ran a hand gently over her bruised skin.

“Those are going to show for a while,” he murmured, and she detected an undercurrent of pleasure in his voice.

Korra grinned and sat up.  “Well, in the days of the warlords, they used to say that the best battles leave scars.”

He chuckled.  “Who told you that?”

“Oh, I don’t remember.  My father, probably.”

Something in Tarrlok’s eyes darkened, so Korra quickly tried to change topic.  “Well, as impressive as they are, I need to stop the swelling.”  She bent some water from the wall over to her lap, pressing it gently against the worst of the bruises and smiling in relief as she felt the healing affects kick in. 

“Katara taught you that?”

“Yeah.  Did you ever meet her?”

“Saw her from a distance, once, back before I was on the council,” he murmured.  “Impressive woman.  No wonder Avatar Aang married her.”

“Mm.”  Korra suddenly felt very cold and exposed, sitting there in the nude in front of him.  She hopped quickly off the desk and began searching for her underwear.  “Well,” she said, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I do have a big game coming up tomorrow, even if the odds aren’t exactly in our favor.”

“The season is nearly over, isn’t it?  You can come back to the task force once your little games are done.  Things have been moving much slower without you.”

Korra cursed at herself inwardly.   _Should have known he wouldn’t be happy about me skipping off on his pet project_.  But she forced an apologetic smile, pulling on her pants and shirt.  “I dunno, Tarrlok.  We’re not going to stop practicing just because the season is over.  Gotta keep in shape, you know?”

“ _Korra_ ,” (Tarrlok took on that tone in his voice, the one that always made her so desperately want to punch him.) “You made an agreement.  My task force is depending upon your presence and your support.  Is this what the people can expect from the new Avatar?  Shirking her promises to go and play games?”

Korra frowned at him, tying her shawl around her hips before stooping to pull on her boots.  “I don’t recall any promises.  I do recall someone putting pressure on me until I agreed to join, and then I remember nearly getting killed a couple times because of the attention it attracted.”

Tarrlok shook his head, holding up his hands innocently.  “I’m just trying to help you see things from another perspective.   _I_  understand, naturally, but RepublicCity won’t be so forgiving.  People are already talking: Amon’s forces are getting stronger, and the Avatar is off playing games.”  He turned and met her eyes, his gaze level and piercing.  “Are you prepared, Korra, to defend yourself against such accusations?”

Korra straightened up, stiff, her hands clenching into fists, and she had to dig her nails into her palms.  “At the moment, Councilman, I only feel like _one_  person is accusing me.”  She turned and headed for the door, and Tarrlok said nothing to stop her.

Outside his office, she slammed down the stairs, mood now thoroughly ruined.   _Fuck him!  Doesn’t he realize I’m not there for a lecture?  Piece of shit!_   She burst out the front doors of City Hall and a blast of cold air hit her face, cooling the temper she could feel rising up in her cheeks.  Naga was sitting obediently by the City Hall gate, curled up against the cold night, and as Korra walked over, she raised her head in excitement at seeing her mistress. 

“Hey girl,” Korra sighed, and briefly buried her face in Naga’s white pelt.  The bruises on her pelvis still throbbed a little.   _Why is it_ , she wondered bitterly,  _that he and I can only get along when we’re having sex?_   Sex with Tarrlok was so consistently good - satisfying and cathartic in every possible way.  Their bodies, matching in every aspect, melded together so wonderfully beneath the sheets, their water  _qi_  synchronizing with hardly any effort.  Her previous (and first) partner, a gangly but endearing boy from a nearby village in the South, had been sweet and hard-working, but no matter how they tried, it had always been awkward and fumbling and ultimately unfulfilling.  He had been kind, though, and friendly, and when they decided it was simply not working, their interactions had remained cordial. 

With Tarrlok, well, as soon as he opened his mouth, she was snarling at him like a caged polar-leopard snarls at teasing children.  She generally tried to keep the subject matter light with him, but sometimes he persisted, laying on gentle pressure after gentle pressure until she collapsed into helpless rage under the accumulated weight.  When it was just physical, they were in constant accord, forever speaking the same language to each other, and the playing field was totally level.  He could no longer weave semantic webs around her or guilt-trip her, and under his touch all her pressure was released in wave after wave.

“Why did he have to say anything?”  She mumbled into Naga’s fur.  “I was having such a good evening.”  The sex that night, the vivid, blossoming pain that was delivered in the same stroke as the raw and perfect pleasure – it had been the best relief she’d had in weeks.  And now she was all tense again, thanks to that entitled, self-seeking, holier-than-thou asshole.

Korra swung herself up onto Naga’s back, a burst of pain hitting her still-sore pelvis, and she urged the polar-bear-dog homeward.  The match tomorrow, she realized, felt more welcome than before.  It would be nice to get back out onto the arena and kick some ass.  Just let Tarrlok try to deride her pro-bending when the Wolf-Bats were eating dust.


	8. Chapter 8

The radio was on, but Tarrlok was hardly listening.  He had been writing and re-writing the same press releases and official statements for hours on end.  Normally, he would have delegated something as simple as a press release to an assistant, but this was something he had to do himself. Tomorrow, Lin BeiFong would be one step closer to losing her job.

Chief BeiFong had sealed her fate the moment she stopped him from decreeing the final pro-bending match shut down.  Amon would not back down from a terrorist threat – he never had before, and a gesture this grand would certainly not be the first time for it.  No matter what preparations the chief of police took, she would fail in preventing it.  She didn’t understand how Amon’s mind worked – not like him.  She was expecting a fair fight.

Well, it would be her loss in the end.  Those who couldn’t play hard needed to get off the field, and in this case, playing hard meant playing as subtly as possible.  The BeiFongs had never understood this.

Her loss, his gain. 

_“The waterbenders slug it out, looking evenly matched!”_

BeiFong had actually had the audacity to imply he was a coward, of all things.  Too blind and stupid to see he had been working for the good of the entire city.  Concede a battle, win a war – protect the people,

(protect Korra)

and refuse to give the Equalists an opportunity to fight on their terms.  The war would be fought, oh yes, and subtle methods would be used, but it would be  _him_  bringing the fight to  _them_.

He had swung the council over to his side, and it would have worked out to his benefit, but then BeiFong had strode in and thrown her brunt tactlessness all over the place. 

Fine.  Let her take the fall.  She’d been a thorn in his side long enough – with her out of the way, he would be able to bring the police force under his sway, make them play by his rules.

Fight on his terms.

_“Oh!  A splash-and-clash sends the Avatar to Zone Three as well!”_

When he’d shifted to BeiFong’s side, Korra had so clearly thought he was doing this for her.  He’d looked down into her eyes, seen them shining with joy and gratitude and relief, so clearly thinking that he was giving in as some sort of apology for his behavior the previous night.  So clearly thinking to herself that, perhaps, he was the only one in this room who always had her back.  A good team.

 _Stupid bitch of an Avatar_.  He crossed out a word that didn’t fit into his speech, rewrote it, crossed it out again.   _She still hasn’t absorbed that first principle I tried to teach her: never underestimate your opponent, never assume they will play as honestly as you do_.

This was, in the end, why the Avatar should be left out of politics entirely.  The backwater little girl still didn’t understand a damned thing about how life worked here, no matter how much he had tried to instruct her.  Unfortunately, the public at large didn’t seem to understand this, seemed to think of the Avatar as some kind of stateswoman – a teenaged girl!  And she, of course, believed the same thing, ate it up.

 _Good for fighting and good for fucking_ , he snarled to himself, and threw down his pen in frustration before reaching over and pouring himself yet another cup of black tea.

Luckily for him, Korra was just clueless enough that he could turn her wild flights of fancy to his own ends with her hardly noticing.  She did catch him sometimes, of course, but generally she was so caught up in the moment that she never noticed where he was steering her.

He picked up his pen to continue writing.

_“Wowzers!  Those look like illegal head-shots to me!”_

It had been so easy to tell, as soon as they walked in, which of her teammates was Mako, and which was Bolin.  Bolin was soft, unassuming, even more so than Korra.  No wonder she had been able to so easily use him – anyone could take advantage of that boy: you could see it from the openness in his eyes, the sincerity, the heart on his sleeve.

That Mako, on the other hand.  There was someone who kept his thoughts hidden.  Someone who would intrigue a girl like Korra, who was too dense to read the boy’s closed, standoffish demeanor.  No wonder she was so obsessed with him – boys like that had always drawn girls by the dozens.  Noatak had been the same way.  Even back during their childhood, when Noatak was barely fourteen, he’d had girls following him around whenever Yakone sent the brothers to the market.  Still, though, silence was no mark of cleverness, even if Noatak had had plenty of that.  This Mako boy, on the other hand, well, he didn’t actually look much brighter than his brother.

Tarrlok had, while watching the Fire Ferrets celebrate in the City Hall, indulged himself in imagining what the brothers’ reactions might be if he quietly informed them that, the night previous, he’d made Korra moan and squeal and squirm beneath him – and that he’d been doing this regularly for  _weeks_.  That he’d had her, tasted her, explored every inch of her and discovered every sensitive spot that could make her gasp and plead for more, harder,  _now_.

He could only imagine the look in their eyes, these boys barely out of diapers, and he’d had to work surprisingly hard to resist even hinting to them about it.  This would have to remain a private fantasy – at least for now.  Ideally, if things went his way, in the future he could make the Avatar melt right there in front of them – but that, of course, was a pipe dream. 

Still, though, a man could dream.

_“Round Two goes to the Fire Ferrets!”_

The statement was so close to being finished now.  Tomorrow, as he blasted BeiFong for her incompetence, the people would hear nothing but his sense of responsibility, his anger on their behalf, his concern for citizens everywhere.  Their trust in him would only be strengthened.

Korra, meanwhile, would have no choice but to return to working with him, to acknowledge that he’d been correct, that she should never have run off to play games when the city was on the line.  She would realize that it was her insistence on shirking her duties for pro-bending that had drawn Amon to the arena in the first place – so long as he gave her a nudge back toward that ever-useful self doubt of hers.  She would stop all this silly foolishness,

(and come back to his side)

and do her duty as Avatar.

A shiver of anticipation ran through him.  Last night had been the first time in so very long and  _spirits_ , it had been incredible, even if she had used him and defied him (as she always did).  He could still see her in his mind’s eye, naked and brown and lying on his desk dripping with sex and sweat, her breasts heaving as she recovered from the orgasm she’d had at his hand, the dark bruises on her hip-bones flowering out to mark where he’d battered her against the desk over and over and  _over_.

Tarrlok leaned his head back in his chair, a soft noise of pleasure rumbling in his throat as he moved one hand slowly down his chest to his groin.

Just then, Shinobi’s annoying narration cut out, and instead, Amon’s cold tones sounded out over the airwaves, calling all to war.

Tarrlok sat straight up, listening intently, and when the transmission cut off and the radio gave out only static, he wasted no time in finishing his drafts.

Time was short.  Everything was falling into place.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: light description of a panic attack

It was hours before Korra finally got back to Air Temple Island.  The games had already stretched late into the night before Amon attacked, and afterwards, Chief BeiFong had insisted Korra, Tenzin and the Fire Ferrets come back to the station to give their testimonies for the official report, even though BeiFong had seen everything herself and knew exactly what the Avatar had witnessed.  Korra would have waited for Mako and Bolin to finish giving their reports, but by that point, Tenzin was insisting that she come back home and get some rest.

“You had some close calls tonight,” he’d said.  “You need sleep.”

She’d been far too tired to put up a fight about it.  The adrenaline was wearing off, but still, on the way home, her muscles had remained tense and her mind twitchy even through the haze of exhaustion.  She sat silently on the back of the air bison, looking down to the glow of the city far below, trying to ignore the worried glances Tenzin kept shooting at her over his shoulder. 

 _I didn’t die, did I?_   She lamented quietly to herself.   _Why can’t he just be satisfied that I’m alive and stop worrying?_

They didn’t speak until the air bison was on the ground.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” Tenzin suggested gently as she hopped down.  “I should go speak to Pema and let her know everything is all right.  I telegraphed her, but I think she’s probably still up.”

Korra shook her head.  “No, I think…I think I want some tea first.  I don’t think I can sleep at the moment.”

Tenzin opened his mouth a little to object, but then closed it and nodded, and the two made their way to the main building together, their backs stooped and aching.

—

When Tenzin and Korra slid open the kitchen doors, both were too drained to register the surprise they felt upon seeing Tarrlok, seated at the kitchen table with a comforting hand on Pema’s clenched fists, a hot pot of tea on the table in front of them.  Large bags hung under the younger woman’s eyes, and her hair hung limply around her face.  As soon as she saw her husband, she leapt from her chair and ran to him, burying her face in his red robes in silence.  Tenzin automatically wrapped his long arms around her, but was gazing at Tarrlok, stunned.

“Tarrlok!  What are you-” Tenzin started to say, but Tarrlok strode quickly over and put a large, warm hand on Korra’s shoulder, and she had to fight the urge to sink into his arms and sleep forever, surrounded by the comforting – and by now familiar – scent of his cologne.

“I heard on the radio.  I came just as soon as I could.  When I found that the two of you still hadn’t returned home, I thought it would be best to stay here for support.”  He shook his head, his brow creasing.  “I  _knew_  something like this would happen.  I should never have listened to Chief BeiFong.  I am  _so_  sorry.”

Tenzin frowned, rubbing Pema’s back.

Tarrlok turned back to Korra, his grip on her shoulder tightening.

“Avatar Korra, I know it’s late and it’s been a horrible experience for you, but maybe if you could go over some of the details with me?  It might be of help in the future.”

The air-bender held up a hand.  “Hold on, Tarrlok.  Korra needs rest.  She’s had a very long day.”

“I’m  _fine_ , Tenzin,” Korra interjected wearily.  “I’m sure the Councilman just wants to hear about everything for his task force, right?”

Tarrlok, looking somewhat surprised, nodded.  “Yes, that’s it.  Unless you really are too tired.”

“No, I…I need some fresh air, actually.  We can go take a walk in the garden.  I’ll tell you all about it.”

Tarrlok nodded again, gently taking her arm and walking out the door with her as Tenzin watched, weary anxiety etched into every line of his face.

—

Outside, Korra remained quiet as she and Tarrlok climbed the cliff steps to the bamboo gardens, where the moon shone peacefully down upon the plants to create a paradise all blue and green and silver.  As soon as they were in the privacy of the garden, Tarrlok released his hold of her arm and turned to look down at her.

“Korra, would-”

Korra turned, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle and burying her face in his warm chest so suddenly that he nearly stumbled.  Tarrlok placed his hands carefully upon her shoulders, feeling them quiver beneath his touch.

“Hey now,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her.  “Hey.  You’re okay, kiddo.  You’re fine.”

“Please, just – I’m sorry – just please – shut up.”  She forced out, and he did, stooping down to press his lips to he top of her head.  He closed his eyes, listening to the crash of the waves on the stony cliffs many feet below the garden, their ever-present rhythm surrounding the little island in a deep embrace.  In his arms, Korra was trembling, nearly too tired to stand, depending on him to hold her up.  He moved one hand over her back, rubbing it gently, and felt with a shock how many knots were there – how truly, incredibly tense she was.  His own lower back twinged with a reminder that he’d been sitting in roughly the same position all day.  And now that Korra was finally back home, he was starting to realize just how exhausted he was himself.

“I just – I can never  _do_  it,” Korra finally forced out, her voice muffled by his robes.

“Hm?” He kept rubbing her back, feeling the muscles there spasm a little as she shivered suddenly from sheer exhaustion.

“No matter how hard I try,” (she sounded like she was sobbing, but when she pulled back for a second he saw her cheeks were dry, as if she was too drained even to weep) “no matter how  _hard_ , he – he always – I can never – I  _can’t_ -!”

The frustration and exhaustion and helplessness took over, and she slumped against him.  Under his palms, her back was heaving.  Her breathing was ragged, erratic.  She was losing control.

“Tarrlok!” Her voice was coming out in a squeak now.  “I’m no good!  All those people nearly got killed and I just – I wasn’t  _able_  to – he got away _again_!”  She was shaking hard now, her entire body vibrating with the strain, and she was gasping like a fish thrown from the water.

Instinctively, he bent down, silencing her with a brief kiss, and then gathered her to himself, pressing his lips once more into her hair.

“Shh.  Listen.  Do you hear the waves?”

She nodded against his shoulder, her back shuddering violently as she tried to force out a sob but failed. 

“Good.  Now breathe.”

He grabbed one of her hands, brought it up to his chest so that she could feel his heartbeat, his own inhale and exhale, moving at the same tempo as the crash of the waves on the rocky cliffs below.

Gradually, her own heartbeat slowed to match his, and her breath regained regularity as she inhaled and exhaled along with him.  They were swaying a little, Tarrlok leading in rocking back and forth gently on the balls of his feet in time to the ocean.  Occasionally, her breath would come in another shaky gasp, and another shudder would run across her shoulders, but these became fewer and fewer, until, finally, she was following his beat entirely, her hand still pressed hard against his heart and her head limp against the crook of his neck.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she pulled away, wiping her eyes even though there were no tears there. 

“Better?” He cupped her cheek in one hand, smoothing her hair out with the other.  She nodded.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.  “I’m…I’m sorry.  I just get so frustrated.  I’ve never felt this helpless.”

“Then we’ll keep working,” he said softly, “on making you  _not_  helpless.”  He smiled.  “And you’re already most of the way there.”

She took a deep breath, nodding again, leaning her cheek against his palm.  His smile widened and he leaned down to kiss her.

“You do need sleep, Avatar Korra,” he whispered against her lips as he pulled back.  “Go and rest.  I’ll see you again soon.”

She managed to give him a half-hearted smile, fatigue clouding her eyes and making her appear a good deal older than she should have looked in the tender moonlight.  Squeezing his hand one last time, she turned and headed out of the garden and down the hill to the women’s dormitory.

Tarrlok nearly stopped into bid goodnight to Tenzin and Pema, but suddenly a sharp pain shot through his lower back and down his legs and he realized just how tired he was himself.  He would send a telegraph to Pema tomorrow, he resolved, thanking her for her hospitality and hoping that she was doing well after that evening’s nasty shock.

For now, though, it was time for bed.

—

In her own room, Korra barely had time to strip off her pants before she collapsed into bed.  Her sleep lasted well into the next morning, and it was without dreams.


	10. Chapter 10

Tarrlok had always been fantastic at mimicry.  He didn’t know where this talent came from, exactly, but he could twist his own voice into tones of indignant rage, profound mourning, firm resolve, all with hardly feeling a thing inside.  He’d learned, over time, to combine this talent with ever-more sincere facial expressions, with dynamic hand movements.  Still, it was the conviction in his voice, his ability to appeal to emotion, to wriggle into the hearts of his audience, which always won people to his side. 

It had been no different in childhood.  Yakone would send his sons to the market to buy food, but the old man was stingy and never gave them enough to meet the standard prices.  They had to learn to haggle like experts.  Noatak, with his strong quietness, had the unique ability to simply look sellers in the eye as he bought fish and bread, to say something as brief as “we are hungry” with such simplicity and moral weight that people felt no other choice but to lower their prices.

This didn’t always work, though, and once Noatak left, Tarrlok had been on his own in the market. 

It was at these stands that he’d honed his verbal acrobatics, learned to dance circles around the sellers and prick them in every available soft spot until they were moved.  He wasn’t like the beggars, who delivered their carefully rehearsed speeches about being down and out and part of the undeserving poor.  No, Tarrlok was more careful than that.  He wormed his way into the hearts of the sellers, made them smile and laugh, sneaking in details about how his father was ailing and his mother was struggling with finances.

They’d always lowered their prices for his performance.  Eventually, he’d convinced the richest merchant in the market to give him a job, and from then on he’d been clawing his way up the social ladder like a rabid polar leopard while his father drank himself to death at home.

_“Think you can talk pretty to me, you little shit?  I see right through you!”_

Today, Tarrlok had been exhausted.  After the late night waiting up at AirTempleIsland, he’d fallen into bed only to force himself up three hours later, shower, and head to City Hall to deliver his statement at the scheduled press conference.  

It had not been the first time he’d done this, and like every time before, it had been entirely worth it.  Lin BeiFong’s qualifications were being put into question.  Already, the press was speculating whether she had been given the job through simony rather than any actual ability.  The stubborn bitch was feeling the pressure on all sides, and it was showing.  Eventually, she’d have to either play by his rules or retire.  Things were coming together perfectly.  All that was left was to secure his control over the police force, guide Korra back to her true calling as Avatar (and not athletic champion), and Amon would be as good as defeated.

A job well done, Tarrlok decided.  Even though he’d had to put on some very light cream to cover up the dark circles under his eyes, even though he was only running on caffeine from several large cups of pu’er, he had delivered his statement in fantastic form.  He had filled his voice with rage, disbelief, conviction, and the press had eaten it right up.

 _Brilliant_ , he surmised, and decided that his performance had earned him the rest of the day off work.  He quickly dashed off a telegraph to Pema, thanking her for her hospitality the night previously, drove home, and curled up in bed for a long-deserved nap.  He finally felt he had earned this.

—

Korra slept in till nearly noon, and she ended up hating herself for it.  Perhaps, perhaps if she had gotten up earlier, had gone over to the pro-bending stadium at the crack of dawn, she would have beaten Asami to the punch.  Mako would be staying at AirTempleIsland, if only she had dragged her ass out of bed early enough to make it happen.

If only, if only, if only.

The events of last night, the emotion and the fear and the panic, had left her feeling drained out and stale, like old flatbread left out in the sun too long.  A thin crust.  And now, she’d have to deal with the knowledge that the boy she wanted so badly was with the girl of his dreams, in a house he had never even dared to dream about.  There would no longer be any room for Korra in his thoughts when he was surrounded by luxury, his head in the lap of a goddess.

Korra stalked out of the pro-bending gym and immediately kicked the first thing she saw – an old glass bottle – into a brick wall.  It didn’t shatter, so she quickly crushed it with some neat earth-bending.

The sight of the little green fragments, glinting in the sunlight, did nothing to heighten her mood.  Her back ached (perhaps from the fighting last night or perhaps from sleeping wrong, she wasn’t sure), and her wrists felt stiff and sore. 

 _The sun shouldn’t be shining so brightly_ , she thought to herself sullenly.  It’s  _a shit day._

 _Damn, Korra, way to sound like every whiny teenager in every dime-store novel._  She laughed softly at herself, but it was without humor, and so she hopped back onto Naga’s back and headed over to the City Hall.

—

“You could knock,” Tarrlok said as she entered Tarrlok’s house, discreetly as ever through the kitchen door.  He was sitting at a table, reading the newspaper in the afternoon sunlight and sipping a hot cup of tea.  His hair was out of its customary ponytails, hanging in loose waves around his shoulders, and he wore only a bathrobe over a pair of loose-fitting slacks.

“Whatever,” Korra brushed it off.  She’d entered his house without announcement so many times by now that she knew his complaint was an empty one.  She strode over and hopped up on a stool next to him.  “Your page said you only came into work for a little while this morning.  Slacking off?”

Tarrlok rolled his eyes, taking another sip of tea as he set his newspaper down.  “No,” he replied. “I hardly got any sleep last night.  Thought I’d come back here for a nap.”

“Feeling better, then?”  Korra looked closely at him.  He did have bags under his eyes, and his face looked a little thinner than usual.   _Working himself too hard, big surprise._

Tarrlok nodded.  “Much better.  Here, have some tea.”  He poured a cup and handed it to her, and she took a sip only to immediately wrinkle her nose in disgust.

“Ergh!  What the hell is this?”

“Pu’er tea.  Drink it all, it’ll boost your energy.”

“It’s bitter,” she grumbled, but tried to down the rest of the cup, fighting the urge to gag.

“Bitter is better.”  He smiled, and for the first time in a long time, Korra noticed the lines on his face.  “How are you, though?”  He reached over, placing a gentle hand on hers.

Korra closed her eyes, shaking her head.  “Shitty.  Mako and Bolin are staying with Asami now.  All the more time for them to get to know each other.”

Tarrlok snorted, and Korra sighed, smiling apologetically.  “Sorry to lay all this on you.  You…you were really nice to me last night.  Thank you.”

He smiled back, and Korra, suddenly uncomfortable, stretched her arms behind her head, trying unsuccessfully to crack her back.

“Ugh,” she grumbled, “my back has been totally fucked up since last night.”

Tarrlok raised his eyebrows, taking another sip of tea.  “You want a massage?”

“Really?  That actually sounds fantastic right now.”  She twisted herself around, trying the crack from a different angle.

He nodded, put down his tea, and gestured for her to come along as he headed up to his room.  She didn’t need the invitation – she was already at his heels.  The two of them climbed the stairs silently, and as they walked down the hall to his bedroom, she realized how incredibly natural all this had become.  The walls of his house, decorated simply but elegantly, were now nearly as familiar to her as the buildings on AirTempleIsland. 

Undressing, too, had become more casual.  Sure, she could still make it a show, turn him on with a slow strip, but she had become so comfortable with him that it was almost second nature to get dressed and undressed in front of him.  Now, she only stripped down to her underwear as Tarrlok removed his bathrobe and dug through a drawer on his bedside table.

“Whatcha looking for?” She flopped down on his bed, relishing the feeling of the high-grade silk beneath her bare skin.  That was one of the benefits, she’d discovered early, of always meeting up here.  The man had good taste.

“Massage oil,” he muttered, shoving things around in his drawer.  “Ah, here it is.”

“You really don’t need that, I’m fine without.”

Tarrlok rolled his eyes at her again.  “Oh, come on Korra, at least do me the honor of treating you.  Next time,  _you_  can sit on  _my_  back and punch at my muscles to your little heart’s content.  I promise.”

She giggled and stretched out on her stomach.  “Fine, fine.  Be a fancy-ass.”

“Good, I think I will.”  He crawled up onto the bed and straddled her, pouring some of the cool, slick oil onto her back and kneading it into her skin.

 “Damn, you are  _tense_ ,” he whispered in her ear, and she made a soft ‘hmph’ noise, but otherwise kept still as he kneaded the muscles in her shoulders.  It was true, though – she’d been getting constant cricks in her back every morning when she woke up and did her stretches, including this morning.  Her muscles could never seem to relax.

She could never seem to allow it.

Tarrlok continued from her shoulders down her back, and she let out a groan of combined pain and relief as he pressed his knuckles into a particularly sore spot, varying the pressure expertly until the kinks were worked out and he could continue onward.  With a sigh of contentment, Korra settled her face down into the soft pillow, breathing in the whiff of his scent – that light and somewhat spiced tone of sandalwood and vanilla – and allowed herself to relax fully as Tarrlok moved his big, warm hands down her spine.  She let out another groan as he rolled his thumb against a muscle toward the small of her back.

“Tarrlok, consider yourself hired.  That’s  _amazing_.”

“Hmm.” Something warm and wet moved down Korra’s spine, and she grinned a little despite herself as she realized that he’d brought his mouth into full participation.  He trailed kisses up and down her back, all the while letting the pressure of his hands ebb and flow, and Korra shivered in delight. 

Without warning, Tarrlok flipped her over, kissing his way from her breasts down to her stomach (was that his tongue in her bellybutton?) and down to the hem of her underwear.

“Woah!  What are you doing?” She yelped, her face going bright red and her sense of relaxation flying straight out the window.

“There’s more than one way to relieve a girl,” Tarrlok jerked down her underwear, and shot her a devilish grin, and soon after Korra’s breath forced its way out of her lungs in a shocked squeak, her head jerking backwards onto the pillow.

It was, quite possibly, the most awkward thing they had ever done together.  There was nothing for Korra but to reach down and thread her fingers into his hair, staring up at the ceiling and biting her lip as she tried to decide whether or not she liked this at all.  She preferred being active in bed, just as active as her partner, and being in a position to simply lie back and do nothing made her feel almost, well,  _vulnerable_.

 _He’s trying to help you relax, idiot.  So just relax_ , a soft voice whispered in the back of her head.   _If he’s going to go to all this effort, might as well enjoy it._

She closed her eyes and settled back on the pillow, trying to fight back the doubts that insisted that he was just playing nice, he wanted something in return, he was too sneaky to be trusted with something so fucking  _tender_ , but  _spirits_ , he was  _good_.

It probably would have felt a great deal better had Korra not been warring with herself the entire time, but Tarrlok was an incredibly persistent man – she had to give him that much – and after many careful and precise and fucking  _incredible_ ministrations, she began to writhe upon the bed underneath him, pressure building as he pushed her further and further to her limit.  She tried to thrust her pelvis upward, but the muscles in her legs were vibrating too hard and she sank back down on to the sheets.  Frustrated, she moaned loudly and as he responded in kind, she gasped out his name like a plea, her eyes watering. 

She expected him to withdraw, to tease her, to hold an orgasm out over her head in exchange for who-knows-what.

He didn’t.

She muttered his name three more times as he brought her to a climax, the last one turning into a sharp shriek, and she almost slammed her legs shut on his head as her back curved into a perfect arch, her head pressed nearly upside-down onto the pillow.

He held her by the ass to support her, laughing, and she could feel it rumbling in his throat as he turned his head to kiss her inner thigh, just over the artery, running his hands up her body as far as he could reach and back down again.

Korra was limp under his touch, gasping for air. 

“Well,” he sighed, crawling up the bed to lean over her, his brown hair draping around them like a curtain, “have I succeeded?  Are you relaxed yet?”

Korra’s muscles felt like  _lizhi_  jelly, little spasms still rippling out across her body from her core.  She nodded weakly.  Tarrlok laughed at her again (she hated it when he laughed, because his eyes crinkled up and the bridge of his nose wrinkled in the most endearing way), and kissed her forehead, breathing in the scent of her hair.  She reached up and gently looped her arms around his neck.  He sighed softly, pulling her close against him.

“Sorry,” he whispered, chuckling into her hair.  “I…couldn’t help but…”

“Hm?  Oh.”  She noticed now: he was more than ready, pressed into her stomach.  She slid one hand down from behind his head, cupping his cheek, but she looked down at his body thoughtfully instead of meeting his eyes.  “No, it’s okay.  Go ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she made herself smile at him, and then immediately looked away again.  Why was he staring at her like that?  She had the uncanny feeling that those bright blue eyes could see right into her if she met his gaze for too long.  “Yeah, it’s fine.  I don’t mind at all.”

He wriggled out of his trousers and underclothes and kissed her, gently, and she breathed out a little moan into his mouth as he entered her.

Korra closed her eyes and held him, running her hands up and down his taut back and through his hair as he rocked into her and pressed his mouth against the pulse-point in her neck.  When was the last time they had been so intimate with each other?  Korra couldn’t remember.  Maybe never.  This level of intimacy – their bodies pressed so close, their faces only inches apart - seemed so out-of-place with him, so foreign.  Usually, she was on top of him somehow, or on her stomach beneath him, or laying down as he stood over her.  This, with his face so close to hers, covering her cheeks and forehead and mouth and nose in sweet kisses that he then trailed down her neck to her collarbone as he moved slowly and gently inside of her – this was something else entirely, even after all the times they had been together.

It was, she realized, the exact sort of thing she had always fantasized about doing with Mako.  She’d visualized Mako’s olive skin pressed tightly against her brown, both of them tangled in a tight embrace, their eyes locked as he pressed in close, so unbelievably close, and, at long last, opened himself up to her.  He would come out of that protective wall he had built around himself and let her into his heart, with no barriers of hurt feelings and suspicions and mistrust between them any longer.

 _I wonder_ , she thought with a twinge of pain,  _if he’s doing this with Asami right now_.  Asami, so tall and slender and graceful, with those bright green eyes and long, silky locks that Korra couldn’t help but envy.  The first time she met Asami had been the first time she was so incredibly conscious of her own thick, tangling hair that never seemed to do anything but defy her.  She could never dream of letting her hair flow as freely as Asami did – let it out of its binds and it would immediately tangle and poof and become entirely unmanageable.  That was what she’d hated the most about Asami, when she first met her.  That fucking perfect hair.  
           

And now, Mako was probably running his fingers through those smooth obsidian strands just as Tarrlok was doing, smelling her perfume in the same way Tarrlok was breathing in Korra’s natural scent.  Mako, in Asami’s home, sharing Asami’s bed, making love to Asami every night in the exact same way Korra had always dreamt.

The exact same way Tarrlok was now.

Korra opened her eyes with a jolt, met his gaze.  She wanted desperately to stop him, make him tell her the truth:  _is this making love?  Is that what this is?_

Instead, she squeezed her eyes closed again, bending her head to press her face in his shoulder.  She had not seen love in his expression, but then, what was there to tell what love from Tarrlok would look like?

_Please, please tell me that’s not what this is._

Finally, when she thought she couldn’t stand this horrible ambiguity, this awful sweetness any longer, he came.  It was with a long, low groan, as he whispered her name over and over just as she had whispered his earlier.  She held him tight throughout it, her fingers tracing gentle circles over the skin on his shoulders as he shuddered into her.

She hadn’t climaxed this time, but that was all right.  She was grateful, even.  An orgasm from this tenderness would only make it more real.

When Tarrlok withdrew from her, he curled up next to her and pulled her into his arms, drifting quickly into a post-orgasmic doze.  Korra, her body now loose and pliant, tried her hardest to join him, to take full advantage of this peace, but her mind would not stop racing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, this was a hard chapter to deal with. If you’ve caught the theme since #8, Tarrlok is playing hardball now. He’s getting serious and pulling out all the stops.
> 
> Part of what was really hard with this chapter is that the playing field is no longer equal like it has been previously. Before this, Korra felt herself to be Tarrlok’s equal in bed, which, for the dynamics of their relationship and her personal sense of self-confidence, was important. Now he’s turned the tables on her. He is, essentially, a full-grown man now totally engaged in using sex as a weapon against a teenage girl. So, if any of you thought this scene was romantic, I hate to burst your bubble, but I really, really need to. I need to have this disclaimer. It isn’t romantic. This is war, both in the City and in the Councilman’s bedroom, and this particular war is being waged against the will of a teen girl. Things are going to get a lot less fun-sex-romp and a lot more drama from here on in, and what Tarrlok did in the bedroom today is going to have an impact (well, it’s not so much what he did as how he did it, but you get the picture).


	11. Chapter 11

Every day wore her thinner and thinner.

Until recently, Korra had managed to convince herself that her air-bending was only on a plateau – yes, her improvement had stalled, but she’d get past whatever was in the way soon enough, and it would come to her eventually.

But now, she was beginning to realize, she wasn’t just stuck in a rut.  She had ground to a full-stop halt.  No matter how long she meditated, how many times she repeated the kata, it was useless.  There was no improving what no longer even seemed to  _be_  there.  She could hardly even sense the  _qi_  in the air around her anymore – all the wind had gone out of her.  Left her.  Even the strange dreams about Aang were fading away, fleeing just as fast as her air-bending abilities.

Thoughts from her last visit with Tarrlok did not help matters.  She tried to stretch her arms into the right positions in the kata, and all she could remember was the feeling of his hands running up her bare skin, caressing every part of her.  When she felt for the  _qi_  of the wind that gusted up against the little island, the memory of his waterbender  _qi_ , so strong inside his veins as he pressed himself gently inside of her overwhelmed her senses and the air’s  _qi_  evaded her, brushing against her skin before abandoning her entirely.

 _He was not making love to me,_ she thought as she performed her air kata over and over and over for hours one afternoon until her [muscles](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/45174525741/with-benefits-11) screamed.

 _He was not making love to me,_ she repeated, attempting to [force](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/45174525741/with-benefits-11) down at least a few bites of rice in the evening as Pema frowned thoughtfully at her

 _He was not making love to me_ , she chanted to herself as she lay awake for hours into the early morning, trying desperately to catch the sleep that slipped through her fingers like the wind.

And yet, there was the memory of her name, hissed into her ear again and again as he held her tight and spilled himself within her, his body quaking with ecstasy. 

He had held her for a long time afterwards, dozing in the afterglow, and she had lay still next to him and felt her right arm slowly going numb as she put off getting up and possibly waking him and having to look him in the eye and say something.  What could she possibly have said to him after all that?  What do you say to someone who has just introduced something so new into such a comfortable routine?  How do you give a friendly kiss goodbye to someone who has just covered you in such unprecedented tenderness?

She had squeezed her eyes closed, pressed her face to his warm chest, tried her hardest to join him in his nap.  She had only succeeded in pretending to sleep, and instead had laid there aching.  At one point, she had finally tried to roll away from him, but in his half-sleep he’d held her tighter, so she kept still as something inside her suffocated.

Finally, he’d stirred, and she’d taken the opportunity to sit up and stretch, pretend as if she’d been resting herself the whole time, as if it had just been another mindless, vulgar fuck to soothe their senses.  He’d watched quietly as she’d put her clothes back on, and as she was pulling on her boots, he’d asked, “See you tomorrow?”

“I dunno,” she’d replied, trying desperately to keep her voice even, and it had come out sounding flat.

“Well,” he’d said softly, “I hope I do.”

Korra had braved a look at him then, and when she saw the gentle smile creasing his eyes, something in her stomach turned.  Without saying another word, she’d let herself out through his window and gone home to sit under the hot shower and lose herself in the feeling of scalding hot water beating down on her back, her forehead on her knees.  She’d even reached a finger up inside herself and frantically tried to clean him out, yelping when she accidentally scratched herself with a half-gnawed fingernail.

She had not seen him the next day – or the day after.  She hadn’t even left AirTempleIsland.

Tenzin was starting to notice the change in her now – she could see it written all over his face as he watched her practice endlessly, only to fail time after time.  He hadn’t said anything yet, though, and for this she was grateful.   _Maybe he thinks I’m just upset about the arena_ , she hoped as he once again tried to help her fix her form – but it was no use: her muscles were betraying her, her body rebelling, and she was too tired to do anything about it.

Finally, Tenzin suggested a return to basics.  “Sometimes,” he told her kindly – a little too kindly, “it helps to repeat the most fundamental exercises until things click again.  Maybe instead of focusing on advancing your technique, we should try that.”

And so, he brought Korra back to the first task: the gates.

Korra paused before the long planks of wood that jutted into the clear blue sky like totems.  These had proved one of the most intense hurdles for her to leap in her first days of air-bender training, but since then, she’d been able (with a few hitches) to fly through them repeatedly until it was no longer necessary to practice with them.  Korra took a deep breath, and receded deep inside herself to try and calm her nerves.

 _He was not_ -

She ran at them, loosening herself just before entering to flow with the air currents that flew through the spinning boards.  As she passed the first row, she could feel the  _qi_  moving along with her, enveloping her and carrying her with it like an ocean wave.  She was floating, twisting like a cyclone through the gates, her feet flicking across the ground like a water-bug over a still pond, and, for the first time in weeks, her heart soared.

 _\- making love to me_.

A board from the third row cracked her in the elbow.  The qi passed by, left her behind, and was gone.  Another smack, this time to her leg, tripping her up.  Fifth, sixth, seventh row –  _crack, crack, crack_.  One caught her outstretched hand and bent her middle finger back and she cried out, stumbling from the gates to land on her knees on the pavement, clutching at her left hand and hissing the pain out through her teeth.

“Korra!” Tenzin hurried to her side, stooping down to look at her.  “Are you hurt?”

“Just my finger,” she gasped.  “It’s no big deal.  I don’t think it’s broken or anything.”  She stuck it in her mouth, wincing.  This was going to swell a little, probably impeding her water-bending a bit on top of everything else.   _Damn_.

“I think you might need a break,” Tenzin said, obviously trying to keep his voice even. “Why don’t we go up to the kitchen and get some tea?”

Korra nodded and allowed him to help her up.  It wasn’t like Tenzin to suddenly stop her practice like this – usually he grudged giving her breaks, and he  _never_  let her stop for a cup of tea.   _He’s giving up_ , a nagging little voice whispered.  _You’re a failure_.

 _Shut_  up, she hissed back.   _Shut up shut up shut up_.

As they entered the kitchen, Pema was just taking a hot pot of tea off the stove.

“Mind if we have some?” Tenzin asked, again trying too hard to appear nonchalant.  A ghost of a frown crossed Pema’s brow as she heard the forced sound in his voice, but it quickly disappeared and she smiled widely as she came over to pour her husband and the Avatar a cup.  “Certainly!  Oh, and Korra, a telegram came for you about a half an hour ago.  It’s from your teammates.  They want you to come visit them at the Sato Estate.”

Korra bit her lip.  Asami had invited her over several days ago, but she’d put off taking up the invitation.  The haunting image she’d built up in her mind of Mako and Asami locked in a passionate lovers’ embrace lifted up before her eyes.  She felt her throat constrict.

“You should go, Korra.”

She looked up at Tenzin in surprise, and he shrugged.  “You’ve seemed very preoccupied the last few days, and your bending is suffering from it.  No, don’t argue with me.  For once, I think you need to go out and enjoy yourself.  No more practice for today – go visit your friends and let your mind relax.  We can try again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Korra said softly, looking down into her tea.  Her reflection swirled in the dark brown liquid beneath her.  Her finger pulsed.  “I suppose it can’t hurt.”


	12. Chapter 12

She hadn’t let the insults get to her at first – or, at least, she thought she hadn’t.  There had, of course, been that first spasm of [pain](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/45975537747/with-benefits-12) when Tarrlok sneered down at her.  That was something she hadn’t been able to conceal quite so well.

 _“How_ is _your airbending going?  Made any significant progress with that?”_

How dare he.  How  _dare_  he.  Those secret insecurities she’d spilled to him, whispered to him across the bed – those had been meant to  _stay_  there.  Their time in his bed was sacrosanct.  It could not be used outside the bedroom for  _any_  reason.  That was the  _deal_. 

He  _knew_  that.

He was the one who’d proposed it in the first place.

And his face –

_“I didn’t think so.”_

The condescension in his eyes hadn’t inflamed her right away.  She’d been too winded from the sudden blow, right where she was most sensitive.  But then, as he’d turned and walked away, his head high and proud, the fury had hit her like a fire-blast and she’d had to ground herself in Tenzin’s solid presence behind her to keep from flying at Tarrlok’s retreating back, spinning him around, clawing his eyes out.

Wrapping her hands around his throat.

Squeezing until the life was gone.

The tide-swell of anger had left her feeling drained, frightened.  The urge to kill him, the little half-moons in her palms where she’d had to squeeze her nails – it made her shiver when she looked back on it.  She hadn’t realized there was such a mighty rage dwelling within her.

And yet, all the while, as he’d smirked down at her, patronized her with his false pity, there was that night in the back of her mind.  That night when they’d [merged](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/45975537747/with-benefits-12) together in such a new way, where he’d looked at her with an expression she’d never seen before.

It hadn’t been love.  It  _couldn’t_  have been love.  But spirits, it had been  _something_.  After all, nobody touched you like that if they didn’t love you, right?

_Right?_

As much as she’d tried to push them away, dismiss them to the back of her mind, the memories of that night remained overwhelming, making her knees weaken in the most hateful way, making her stomach clench up and flip over.  He’d slid into her, so sweet, so  _worshipful_ , like a new husband for the first time with his virgin bride.  As if he knew every corner of her heart.  As if the physical copulation was only an outward manifestation of something that had occurred long before on a spiritual level.

No matter how hard she tried to push these memories down, they surged back to the surface like bile.  Seeing Tarrlok again at Saikhan’s swearing-in after avoiding him for so long made them come back with a new vengeance, and as she’d met his cruel gaze, she could only see, like a shadowbox projection, his face as he groaned out her name in rapture.

That evening, after she and Tenzin returned from Saikhan’s swearing-in, Korra and her friends sat in her room drinking plum wine that one of the brothers had secreted out of the kitchen.  They sat and chatted quietly for hours, all of them still a bit shaken from the recent incident at the Sato factory, and the wine flowed freely and sank into their muscles, soothing and warm.  The conversation flowed idly, meandering from subject to subject as the little group passed from hysterical laughter to serious and back again.

“So,” Bolin finally asked, “ _are_  you thinking about joining up with that Tarrlok guy again?  You were pretty into that task force for a while.”

Korra swallowed a grimace, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark frown pass over Mako’s face.  “Korra isn’t gonna waste time on that shit again,” he said, taking a swig of wine.  “Right, Korra?”

Korra shrugged, shaking her head.  The mention of the task force had made her stomach clench.  She’d vowed that morning never to return, her pride bruised and confidence shattered under Tarrlok’s piercing tongue, but the work had been almost addictively fulfilling, and now that pro-bending was effectively over, there seemed to be a gaping hole left.  “I dunno.  I don’t think so.  He was a jerk, but, I mean, we did get some stuff done.”  She sighed.  “He just…argh, he’s awful.  I need to think about it more.”

Asami let out a dismayed groan and flopped over, her hair flowing out across Mako’s lap.  “Please, enough about that politician.  You said yourself it was a vanity project.  Why not take care of things on your own?  You are the Avatar.”

 _Half-baked_ , Korra thought bitterly to herself, and she tossed her head noncommittally.

“Asami’s right!” Bolin pounded one meaty fist on his knee, his words a bit slurred from the wine.  “We can do this together!  Form a new Team Avatar, just like Sokka and Katara and everyone!”

Korra smiled weakly, shrugging again.  “I guess it could work.  Do you really think we could take on Amon, though?”

“Amon?” Bolin waved his hand as if brushing the Equalist leader off his shoulder.  “Big whoop!  Who cares about Amon when we’ve got the Avatar?”

Korra smiled again, but still, whispering in her ear, there was Tarrlok:  _half-baked.  Half-baked.  Half-baked._

Further plotting was interrupted, though, as the door to Korra’s room slid open and the three airbending kids piled in.

“Hey!” Meelo announced, “We’re gonna play sardines, and you guys have to play with us!”

“I don’t think…,” Mako started to say, but Asami was already climbing to her feet and pulling him up.

“Come on!” She laughed, “It’ll be fun!”

Welcoming the distraction, Korra followed the others out.

“So who’s it?” Bolin asked when they were all out in the main courtyard.

“Korra!” Jinora pushed Korra forward, and the Avatar stuck out her tongue in response.

“Yeah, Korra, go hide!” The brothers chimed in.  She held up her hands in defeat.

“Fine, fine, fine.”

The others closed their eyes and Bolin began counting loudly, with far more drama than necessary.  With a sigh, Korra turned and jogged up the mountain.  She’d discovered a small cave near the cliffs the last time she’d taken a run around the island, and so she immediately pushed through the foliage to the far side of the island and made her way upward toward where the stooped entrance was.

There was still enough sunlight to see inside the cave well enough, and the balmy afternoon had warmed up the hole enough for it to be plenty comfortable.  Korra wriggled in and made herself comfortable on the dirt floor, closing her eyes to listen to the waves crashing on the rocks far below.

 _Maybe I should go out and work on my own_ , she mused to herself as she waited.   _Couldn’t hurt.  It would certainly help to avoid Tarrlok’s scheming – and whatever he’s up to with all this Saikhan business._  

Still, though, a pang of longing hit her.  Those nights working with the task force had been surprisingly fulfilling, and celebratory drinks afterwards at Jiang’s with the Xu twins had always been a lot of fun.  She couldn’t help but miss them.

And yet, if she went back, she’d have to face Tarrlok.  Face Tarrlok, and his smiles and his confusing caresses and the horrible, gentle,  _sweet_  way he’d held her and gazed at her as if she was the greatest treasure he could imagine.

Right before stabbing her in the back, her air-bending failures as his dagger.

“I thought I heard you go off in this direction!”

Korra snapped out of her thoughts to see Mako at the cave entrance.

“I had no idea there was a cave up here,” he said, pushing his way in and settling down beside her.  “Did you find it yourself?”

“Yeah,” Korra replied.  “When I was out for a run the other day I almost fell into it.”

Mako snorted and shifted his weight to make himself more comfortable.  His arm and leg brushed close to Korra’s and she tried to move away a little, hating the way his touch made her skin prickle.

“The others are pretty far behind,” he said, glancing back out of the hole.  “I think we might have some time before they find this place.”

“Hmm.”  Korra forced herself to focus on something else, anything but the touch of his body to hers in the cramped, close earth.  She closed her eyes.  The wine was taking its toll.

“So can you feel it?” Mako asked, and she cracked her eyes open to glance at him.  “The earth’s  _qi_  around us?”  His face was a breath away in the growing darkness, his shoulder squeezed so close to hers.

“Yeah,” Korra murmured, and looked down to dig her fingers into the dirt.  “All the time.  It’s stronger when I have my shoes off, though.”

“Bolin says it’s like a constant hum beneath him.  Like he’s standing on the hood of a Satomobile and he can feel the engine vibrating.”

Korra looked back up at Mako, her face splitting into a grin.  “Yeah, exactly like that!  I didn’t know how to describe it before, but now that I think of it, that’s how it feels.  And fire is like-”

“Like breath,” Mako finished, returning her grin.  “I know, right?  Like you can feel the sun breathing with you.  Or yelling sometimes.”  He opened his right hand and up sparked a little flame.

“Quit it!” Korra smacked the flame out.  “You want them to find us faster?”

“Sorry,” he chuckled.  “So…how about water?  I’ve never been able to imagine what water  _qi_  must feel like.”

“Hmm.”  Korra leaned her head back against the cave wall, looking up at the rocky ceiling, where little strands of roots hung down between the cracks.  “Water…water is like blood.  You can feel it flowing in you, pulsing.  Like a heartbeat, almost.”

“A heartbeat?”

“Yeah.”  Korra pointed out of the cave, toward the beach.  “You hear the waves?  It’s like that.  But surrounding you.  Inside you.  Just a constant rhythm.”

“Wow,” Mako sighed, looking to where she pointed, out where the last traces of the brilliant purple sunset glimmered over the waves.  “I just…I can’t imagine what feeling all of this must be like.  Feeling the earth  _qi_ , fire  _qi_ , water  _qi_ , all at the same time.”  He turned to gaze at her, and she blushed at the wonder she saw in his eyes.  He’d never looked at her like that before.  “The whole world must feel awake to you.”

Korra shrugged, feeling a little sheepish suddenly.  “I guess.  I suppose it will after I master all the elements, anyway.  I still can’t get air.  I still have no idea what air  _qi_  even really  _feels_  like.”  She stretched her arms out in front of her, as if trying to grab something in front of her face.  “It’s like…I know it when  _it_  touches  _me_ , but  _I_  can’t feel it all the time yet.  It’s just sudden moments, and I know I have it, but half the time I’m not even sure.  Half the time I don’t even know if it’s air  _qi_  I actually felt or something else.  I…I don’t know.”  She shook her head, dropping her hands back down onto her lap.  “I can’t describe it.”

“Hey,” Mako’s hand wrapped around hers, and Korra was, at that moment, very glad for the semi-darkness, because she knew her face was lighting up like a hot iron.

“You’ll get it,” Mako said, and there was nothing conciliatory or comforting in his voice – he  _knew_.  He was  _convinced_.  “It’ll come.  Just gotta be patient.”

“Mako…,” Korra turned to look at him, and in the half-light it was electric, his kind gaze steady and welcoming and confident in her.  In her ability.

“Ha-HA!  Found you guys!” 

Mako and Korra turned to see Ikki clambering into the cave behind them.  Outside, the joyous shouts from the others were getting nearer.

“I knew you couldn’t hide forever!”  The girl settled herself between Korra and Mako, quite pleased in herself.  “Me and my brother and sister know this place better than  _anybody_.  Me especially.”

Korra rolled her eyes, but over Ikki’s head she caught sight of Mako’s grinning face, and she couldn’t help but smile back, just as Meelo, shouting happily, crawled in after his sister.  The others followed soon after, and all seven children huddled in the cramped hole together, snorting with laughter, until a centipede crawled over Jinora’s hand.  She screamed, and the lot of them burst from the cave in a confused, joyous panic.

—

The re-founding of Team Avatar was forgotten until the next day, when the brothers brought it up once more.  Tarrlok’s insults had settled deep by then, and the bitterness had fermented and become a burning need at the pit of her stomach, and so Korra agreed.  The four of them, high on adrenaline and flush with excitement, piled into Asami’s car and went hunting.  It was early in the evening, they were young, their veins buzzing, and the road was open to them beneath the wheels of the Satomobile.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes with a big, huge, flashing trigger warning for physical/sexual violence (related to dubcon spanking). Tarrlok also uses some very unkind words to mentally describe Korra, and I am very unhappy with him about it.  
> I normally put my notes at the end, but I feel like this one needs to come at the beginning. This was one of those passages that emerged, fully formed, in my mind’s eye. I knew everything that was going to happen here before I even started writing it.   
> That said, I really didn’t want to write it, because it pushes my boundaries in some very uncomfortable ways. What happens in this chapter, however, is the long-expected wake up call. This is also probably one of the most honest sexual experiences Tarrlok and Korra will have had together in With Benefits. It is a deeply, deeply unhappy situation,and I didn’t actually enjoy writing it in the least. As a writer, however, I obediently follow where the muse leads, even when the path becomes dark.

Tarrlok could not remember ever being so insulted. 

After all he had done for her, after being her escape, her confidant, her shoulder to cry on, she went to that bitch BeiFong for help with the Sato case.  Despite her agreements, all their work together on the task force, she had neglected him when it mattered.  She had ignored him.

After all his hard work.

After making so many little allowances for all her petty desires.

After bringing her into his bed and treating her like a damn  _queen_.

When he heard, he could hardly speak, and thankfully the other members of the council believed it was just shock at Sato’s actions.  He kept his rage contained until he made his way up to his office later, his vision blurring and red.  Once he was alone, he’d kicked his desk as hard as he could, stubbing his toe and fighting back the urge to scream bloody murder.

That little bitch.

That little  _cunt_.

The worst was that everyone must know how great of an insult this was.  Everyone  _had_  to know.  Korra’s affiliation with the task force was one of the biggest stories of the year, and now, in public, she had ignored it and gone straight to Tenzin and BeiFong, of all people.  Everyone had to see how humiliated he was.  There was no way they could have missed it.

He’d thought things would go easier now, after their last time together had worked out so well.  Yes, she had withdrawn for a little while, but that was entirely expected.  The girl was confused – good.  He had meant to confuse her.  Eventually, her simple little head spinning, she’d have come crawling back to him, wanting more and not knowing why.

But she was not  _behaving_.  She was not playing by his  _rules_.  The confusion he’d planted in her little brain wasn’t having the right effect.  She was resisting him – for the hundredth, the thousandth time, she was resisting him.

The  _audacity_.  Did she not understand who he was?  What he could do?

So when he saw her again, he dug in all the knives at his disposal – at least the ones that would not wound him too, of course.  The one that had pleased him most was the jab against her air-bending.  Her eyes had widened at the shock of pain, the withering mortification.  Good.  Let her have a taste of her own medicine – humiliated in public.  Insulted.  Cowed and brought low.

The stupid girl should not have been so surprised.  What could she expect?  She’d already known for quite some time that he was not one to play nice.  Tarrlok had never been one to give kisses for blows; she ought to know that well enough by now.  She’d commented on it plenty of times in his bedroom, after all. 

This spiteful, vengeful streak of his had been what, eventually, helped him to rise above even his own boss in the marketplace, to become the youngest and most powerful man there, to win every election he’d ever participated in.  Tarrlok had not come this far without establishing a reputation as a man people were better off befriending.

This had, of course, driven away plenty of women; the wealthy, spoiled daughters of RepublicCity moguls were not used to a man who returned every insult, every barb.

But not Korra.  She had never had any illusions about his personality. She had never expected any more or any less from him. 

At least, apparently, until now.

Well, then, the little bitch would just have to be reminded.  He would not be walked over.  Not again.  Not  _ever_  again.

—

And then it happened again.

Tarrlok had assembled a crack team for an immediate response to the Equalist jailbreak.  They had formed up in record time – he hadn’t even bothered to change into his armor.

When they pulled up, Tarrlok’s heart jumped into his throat at the sight of light flashing up against the buildings.  The escaped Equalists had already gotten their hands on gloves, this early?  But how?   _When_?

And then he looked closer and seen the news vans and the cameras, their flashbulbs popping as Korra and her little friends posed like movie stars around the group of cowed escapees.

Humiliated.

Again.

By a group of  _brats_.

It was more than he could stand.

Saomik, the waterbender driving the task force van, glanced over at Tarrlok.  “Do you still want-”

Tarrlok didn’t bother responding.  He was out of the truck before Saomik could even finish his sentence.  His vision was blurring as he made his way over to where Korra stood, his muscles screaming with the strain of holding back.  As he got closer, he saw her mouth curl up into an awful little smirk, and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck nearly stand on end.

“Avatar Korra,” He snarled, his voice sounding clipped and unnatural, “What do you think you’re doing here?”

“Oh, hey Tarrlok,” she drawled in return, her smile growing ever-wider.  “Nice of you to show up,  _finally_.  Here, we captured the escaped convicts for you.”

He quite nearly snapped at that.  Quite nearly leapt at her, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her until she saw reason.  “What you did was tear up the city and impede the real authorities in their pursuit of these criminals!”

Korra pretended to look confused, cocking her head and tilting her curved hips ever-so-slightly.  “Hmm, that’s funny.  I didn’t see you, or your, ah,  _little_ ” (her eyes flicked briefly to his crotch and he had to clench his fist to keep from smacking her) “task force or the cops the whole time.  If it wasn’t for Team Avatar, they’d have gotten away.”

Tarrlok glanced over at the rest of this ‘Team Avatar.’  The brothers, both of them in it, no doubt, for Korra, and that one straggler, that one lonely outcast, trying so pathetically hard to be a fully-integrated member of this rag-tag team – the Sato girl.  She was staying close to Mako, as if trying to remind him that she was there, to remind  _everyone_  that she was there, but all their eyes were on the Avatar.

 _How soon_ , Tarrlok mused, nearly pitying the girl,  _this team will crumble_!

But for now, this dismal excuse for a Team Avatar had shown him up, yet again.  He had to end this – by any means possible.

“My office,” he said, his voice low.  “One hour.  We need to talk about all of this.”

Korra raised an eyebrow and folded her arms across her chest.  “Really?  I’m not sure there’s much to talk about, Tarrlok.  We beat you.”

Tarrlok paused, clenched and unclenched his fists.

“One hour,” he said darkly, before turning and stalking back to the truck.

—

To his mild surprise, she did show up, and without her friends.  As soon as she came in through the door, she locked it behind her, as if she knew where this would end.  He was sitting behind his desk, leaning on it with his hands to his forehead as if in prayer.  She came over and stood in front of his desk, quiet, her eyes guarded, and waited for him to speak.

Behind him, the unending waterfall murmured its gentle accompaniment, washing all the other noise out of the room.

“Avatar Korra,” he said after a long silence, “you need to stop this foolishness and come back to the task force.  I don’t know what you’ve been playing at recently, but it’s gone on long enough.”

“Oh?” Her voice was icy.  “I thought I was only a  _half-baked_  Avatar.  Why would you want someone like that on your task force?”

Tarrlok lowered his hands, looking up at her.  “Because,” he sighed, “we work better together than apart.  Your friends aren’t going to be able to keep up to your pace forever, and my task force is… _lacking_  without you.  I think it’s time for you to admit that this is the best route for both of us.”

Korra’s eyes narrowed.  She shook her head.  “And I think, Councilman,” she whispered, trailing her fingers over the surface of his desk, circled it until she was standing next to him, “that you need to fucking admit that this has nothing to do with the task force.”

His eyes shot up to hers, almost involuntarily.

She leaned down, placing her hands on his arm rests, her nose nearly touching his.  “You’re jealous, Tarrlok.  Jealous of me.  Jealous of all the little distractions that keep me out from under your thumb.  You just can’t stand that I’ve accomplished more in a night than you did in a month, and that I did it without your help.”

Tarrlok sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking steadily up at her.  “You’re right,” he admitted, running a hand up her bare arm to her shoulder and finally cupping her cheek, “I’m jealous.   _Very_  jealous.  But, more than that, I miss you.”  He smiled up at her, pushing a strand of hair gently behind her ear.  “I thought we were turning into something really great, too.  That last time we were together was…well, it was amazing.”

Korra froze, her blue eyes wide, and he saw a flush rise under her ruddy skin.

“I don’t believe it,” she said softly, and Tarrlok raised his eyebrows in question.

“I really can’t believe it,” she repeated, and suddenly he saw the shocked expression disappear from her face, replaced with the same scoffing smile he’d seen on her lips an hour earlier.  “You are  _still_  trying to manipulate me.  After all this time, you’re still trying!”

“Fine,” he said, his voice curt.  “You want me to be honest, Avatar Korra?  I’ll be honest.”

He yanked her down onto his lap, pulling her pants down as he did, and pressed his mouth fiercely to her neck, his teeth scraping the skin there.  She let out a sharp cry, but without any hesitation she was reaching down, jerking open his fly and pulling his pants down just enough so that he was fully accessible to her.  Within a few strokes, he was ready, and she lowered herself onto him, facing him so that he could continue to attack her neck and collarbone as she did.  It was rough and she wasn’t quite ready, but he shoved himself in and gripped her by her ass, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. 

Korra moaned, reaching up to tangle her fingers in his hair, and freeing one hand, he pulled her shirt up over her breasts and bit down on one.  She moaned again – whether it was from pain or pleasure he couldn’t tell - and ground on him harder, her nails digging deep into his scalp as she did.  Almost out of instinct, he smacked her ass –  _hard_.  She gasped and pulled away, blinking at him stupidly and yet still continuing to ride him, her hips rocking in perfect time to his.

He did it again, the corner of his mouth twisting cruelly, and so she lunged back at him, pulling his shirt open and biting into his shoulder as viciously as she could, holding down until he wanted to yell in pain, but instead he just delivered yet another blow to her bare ass, as hard as he could manage from that angle.  She let out a muffled yelp and bit even deeper, until finally he grabbed her by the ponytail and yanked her head back, kissing up her neck to her mouth and tasting his own blood on her lips. 

He shoved his tongue into her mouth, possessive and hungry and fierce, and at first she wrestled back, but then she bit down on it and he did yell this time, shoving her backward off him so that her back collided with his desk.  Tongue stinging, Tarrlok jumped to his feet and grabbed her by her upper arms.  She kicked and struggled and squirmed, but he managed to drag her over to the water-wall and shove her up against it so that he could lift her up by her thighs and thrust back inside of her.  He knew the water had to be freezing, and that the sculptures on the wall had to be digging into her back, but shoving the Avatar, with her incredible  _qi_ -flow, into the water was like screwing in a light bulb.  Her veins lit up with electricity beneath his fingers.  Her blood was crackling.

Tarrlok reached between her legs and began to stimulate her further, his touch rough and uncompromising and totally lacking in gentleness, and yet this girl, this radiant, electric,  _qi_ -battery of a girl who seemed to take utter delight in anything that pushed her, anything that challenged her, moaned.  Her head rocked back into the rushing water as he pushed her against the bumpy, grating wall, her nails digging into his arms so tightly that they broke skin.  The water  _qi_  enveloped them, quickening with every heartbeat and every gasp, and soon they were both howling, their voices almost inhuman, hardly caring who heard them.

And yet he was not done.  She wanted honesty?  She would have honesty.  She would have her challenge.  She would learn what it is to be pushed.

—

Korra hadn’t wanted it to end as quickly as it had.  She’d tried to tell him to hold off, let it last a little longer, let the rushing water surround her for a little longer as he crashed like a tidal wave into her. 

He’d pushed her, though, and before she could stop him, they were both screaming in release.  When it was over, he lowered her to the ground for a moment, and she felt her knees buckling beneath her, when suddenly she was no longer even on her feet, and instead was turned over his knee, and his hand was colliding like a whip against her ass.

It knocked the breath out of her, and yet the blows kept coming.

“Wait,” she tried to say, but she could only mouth the words, and he didn’t see, because her face was turned away from him and he just kept  _going_.  “Wait, wait, I’m done!”

She wasn’t sure if she’d ever made a sound.  Her ears were ringing.

Korra squeezed her eyes shut, and suddenly it was as if she was seeing everything from a very great distance: Tarrlok, his hair disheveled, face red with exertion, paddling the Avatar as if she were a misbehaving child.

And then, one thought formed, perfectly calm and stable and flawless:  _this must end.  All of this must end._

When he finally stopped, Korra allowed him to turn her over so that she was seated on his knee.  His eyes were shining in a wicked smile.

“Well,” he said, his voice triumphant, “was that  _honest_  enough for you?”

“Actually,” Korra replied, and the calmness in her voice sounded almost alien to her, “it was.  Thank you, Tarrlok.  This helped a lot.”

Tarrlok’s eyebrows shot up, his smile frozen in an ugly combination of pleasure and real shock.  “Oh?”

Korra stood, pulling up her pants.  “Yeah.”  She tightened her pelt around her waist, and turned to face him.  “It’s over, Tarrlok,” she said, serene despite her aching flesh.  “All of it’s over.  The deal is off, and you and your task force can go right to hell.”

Without another word, Korra turned on her heel, unlocked the door, and strode out of his office, taking care to etch in her mind every last detail of his stunned, enraged expression.

Riding home on Naga, she had never felt more free. 


	14. Chapter 14

When Tarrlok had gone to bed that night, he had assured himself, repeatedly, that Korra had not been serious.  She was a capricious, headstrong child, driven by hormones and shifting desire.  Variable as the moon.  The deep bruises on her buttocks would soon heal, and with their fading would go the memory of her anger.  She would not forget who he was, certainly, and she would learn to have a little more respect for his position, but after a time her desires would take over.

He’d told himself this before, of course, and having to tell himself the same thing again, in such a very short span of time, wore on his confidence a little.  But, then he reminded himself that these things are a very long process after all.  Ba Sing Se was not built in a day, and influence was not cemented overnight.  She had already learned that he could take her to levels of intimacy she’d never experienced before, and now she’d learned that he could [apply](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/47517786715/at-long-last-with-benefits-14) discipline when needed.  Every unruly child, spoiled by their parents, hated discipline at first, but in their hearts they craved it.

She would soon realize that she, too, craved it – and that he was the one best suited to provide it.  Not Tenzin, who was too [soft](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/47517786715/at-long-last-with-benefits-14) and indulging, or Lin who was frigid and distant, but the man who knew her inside and out.  He had already long been available to her as her release from stress.  He would remain so, and she would flourish under his firm guidance outside the bedroom while being rewarded in spades within.

—

This was what he had told himself the night she left him.

The night after that, he was driving into the mountains with her bound in the back of his truck, feeling very much as if he were standing on a precipice with his toes off the edge.

_How had it come to this?_

He kept his hands steady upon the wheel, focusing upon the winding, dangerous road that ribboned up the side of a deep, sharp valley into the crest of the mountain range.  Any wrong move could send the car careening off the edge, and that would be the end for Tarrlok and his prisoner both.

His  _prisoner_.

 _His prisoner, the[Avatar](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/47517786715/at-long-last-with-benefits-14)_.

_(“You will destroy the[Avatar](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/47517786715/at-long-last-with-benefits-14).  You must avenge me.”)_

Tarrlok pulled the car over to the side of the road, hugging the mountain wall.  He barely had time to pull the parking brake before he stumbled outside into the bitter cold and bent over on the ground, heaving.

Nothing came up.  He knelt, shuddering, for several minutes upon the ground, and though his stomach clenched and unclenched with sickening jerks, and though he gagged once or twice in semi-preparation, no vomit came.  It was a false alarm. 

Tarrlok coughed once and rose to his feet, his knees weak and trembling.  He walked slowly back to the Satomobile and leaned against it, covering his face with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut, relishing the cold wind that was whipping snow against his bare skin and, little by little, clearing his head.

Things were manageable.  Things were still manageable.  He had lost his temper, brought this to a head far quicker than he should have, but this was not the end of all hope.  He could still spin this, so long as he moved quickly and got back to City Hall before dawn.  He could still keep his life from falling apart.  It would just take some very careful maneuvering and a little luck.  Fortune, hopefully, still viewed him with favor, though these days he was beginning to seriously doubt it.

Drawing in one last breath of the stinging mountain air, Tarrlok swung the door of the Satomobile open and climbed back inside, raking his long fingers through his hair absentmindedly with one hand while he turned the ignition with the other.

It was going to be fine.  He was going to be fine.  Not all was lost.

The cabin was not far now.  He’d purchased it only a few years ago, back when the council first began to take notice of the Equalists.  They hadn’t been considered a big threat, not at first, and for a while the council had allowed them to function with a sense of tolerant dismissal.  Tarrlok had not been so trusting; after reading a few tracts of their propaganda and quietly buying information from some of the city’s shadier stool pigeons, he had purchased the old hunter’s lodge as a possible refuge.  Something about the tone of those tracts had caught his eye, set off alarm bells in his mind.  Something about their rhetoric, their passion, had made him certain that they would simply not stop.

He’d been right, of course.  The Equalists hadn’t stopped, though until recently they’d remained generally underground and out of the council’s earshot.  He, meanwhile, hadn’t been sure enough of his hold upon the council to press them into doing something about this threat.  His youth and relative lack of political connections (at the time) had forced him to bide his time before putting forward his brainchild: the task force.  The Avatar’s arrival and the subsequent Equalist reaction had given him the perfect opportunity, but the truth was, the task force had been on his mind for as long as he’d known of the growing Equalist threat.  With Korra’s coming, his years of hard work, years of pulling everything into place, had finally seemed to come together.  For a while, even  _she_  had been part of that perfect picture, one of his ducks so neatly lined up.

It had all been going so well.  Years and years of hard work, years of waiting quietly for the ideal moment, were coming under threat.  His house of cards was teetering dangerously in the wind.

And all because of that bitch of an Avatar.  The girl who should have been the crown jewel of his achievements.  The girl who should have been his partner as he struck down the Equalists and pulled the city back to its feet.  And instead of playing along nicely, she had come barging in like a stampeding camelephant in a china shop, sending his perfect world crashing to the floor.

But never mind that now.  With the right timing, the right spin, he could keep her shut up in the platinum cell in his cabin’s basement – yet another precaution that had come through for him – and in the end ‘rescue’ her as part of his grand victory.  It was a stretch, but he’d been in tighter spots before.  All that was really required was keeping the little cunt quiet after he released her.

Well, there were ways to convince her.  The brat still wasn’t used to pain or fear.  That was a good place to start.  She might not be afraid of him yet, not after all their nights together, but a bit of pain could conjure up fear soon enough. 

At that thought, Tarrlok’s stomach twisted.  He remembered wolves, forced to dance, their mouths hanging open and tongues lolling out in agony, muscles twitching under his grasp.  And the horrible pressure and wrenching as Noatak had –

Tarrlok shook his head, brushing the memories away.  He couldn’t afford guilt now.  Every victory required little sacrifices, and a strong girl like Korra would surely have no  _lasting_  damage if he had to use his bloodbending to further control her.  He’d recovered from it himself just fine.  She would do the same.

—

Getting Korra into the cabin was no trouble.  She struggled a little at first, but the overwhelming pain soon cowed her, and she went limp under his bloodbending grasp, allowing him to transport her into the basement.

As soon as he released the grip, she was flying at the closing cell door, flame vomiting from her mouth like an ancient angry god.  He managed to slam the door shut just in time, the heat of her flames brushing his cheeks and singeing the loose threads on his torn shirt.

“ _You’ll never get away with this!_ ” She screeched as soon as she realized she was cut off.  Tarrlok winced; her shrill voice cut straight into his pounding skull.  “Tenzin and the others will find me!  You’re going  _down_ , Tarrlok!”

“Shut up!” He raged, slamming one hand on the platinum box.  “You little shit, shut up!  You come into  _my_  city, into  _my_ government, trying to turn everything upside-down, everything I’ve worked for!  And you think you can get away with it, just because you’re the fucking Avatar?” 

“I was  _defending_  people!” She yelled back from inside.  “Wasn’t that supposed to be  _your_  job,  _Councilman_?”

“I do  _not_  need help with my job!” He yelled, and his voice cracked a little and he suddenly realized that he was dangerously close to losing his control entirely.  “I have been doing this for  _far_  longer than you, Avatar, and I have clawed my way up from the  _rock bottom_.  I do not need you to tell me how to do this.”  He took a long, juddering breath, his vision clearing of red as he forced himself to calm down. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause.  “I’m sorry I have to do this.  But you have pushed me over and over and I  _cannot_ think of another way.”

There was no answer from inside, so Tarrlok turned and stalked toward the stairs, trying to stop his hands from shaking.

“Did all of…all of that, mean nothing to you?” She whispered from in the box, and Tarrlok stopped in his tracks and turned to look back, as if he could see her in there, her big blue eyes confused and pleading and lost.

“Of course not,” he said coldly.  “And neither did it to you.  Weren’t you always the one to come crawling back to me, wanting some release?  Wanting to  _use_  me?  I was your  _vacation_ , Avatar Korra, one you just.  Kept.   _Taking_.  Don’t pretend as if it was anything more; you’re not a good enough politician to lie  _that_  well.”

There was no reply, so Tarrlok turned and limped back up the stairs.  As he reached the door, he heard a soft sob – almost inaudible – from below, and his stomach twisted again.


	15. Chapter 15

Deep in the darkness, Korra hated herself.  She hated herself for falling for his act, for not seeing the brutal man beneath the political exterior.

She had never agreed with his politics, to be sure.  He had little mercy and a lot of paranoia, even if he did get things done.  But she had never seen what lay underneath all that.  She remembered the look in his eyes when he twisted her very blood under his grasp, bending her until she was sure she’d break, and with a sickening in her stomach, she realized that it had been there so many times before.  When he’d beaten her at bending in the gym and shoved his hand down her pants, when he’d pinned her down on his desk and fucked her raw, when he’d put her over his lap and spanked her like a disobedient _child_ … and when he’d made love to her as sweetly as any loving husband.  Every time.  Every time, that look had been there.  She’d just been too distracted by his words, his laughter, his hands.

She’d always known he was manipulative and petty and malicious, but he was so much worse than she had ever imagined.

Enraged at herself, she began to howl and scream, hammering against the door of the box in desperation.  It wouldn’t give, and somehow she knew there was no-one anywhere nearby who could hear her cries.  Finally, when she had yelled herself hoarse and had bruises on her fists from battering at the platinum door, she sank down to the floor.  She’d have to find another way out.

There was no point in offering him sexual favors in return for her freedom.  He’d already had her favors – in spades.  _Everything I could have offered him, that he ever could have wanted, he got out of me from the very beginning_.  Something went sour in her stomach as it dawned on her:  _He disarmed me as soon as possible._

_“Find out what your opponent’s greatest weapon is, and disarm them.”_

“Shit,” she whispered.  “ _Shit_.”  Tears welled hot in her eyes once more, but she scrubbed them away with the back of her fist.   _No.  No more self-pity.  You got yourself into this one, Korra.  Now get yourself out._

She assumed the lotus position.  There was nothing left to her – no other weapon to fight with but this.

 _Aang_ , she prayed.   _Aang, please help me.  Help me_.

And, as if that was all it took, her mind opened up, expanded to fill the room, the world.    She was thrown violently backwards into another body and when she opened her eyes again, Tarrlok was staring at her again, that familiar grin spread across his face.

No.  Not Tarrlok.   _Yakone_.

 _Spirits!_   Something deep and wild in her cried out.  She heard screaming somewhere outside of herself, and she realized that her body – far away now – was screaming in horror back in its platinum cage.   _Spirits, no!  No!  NO NO NO!_

When Aang dropped her back into her own skin, tears were still dreaming out of her eyes, and she was shaking.  Immediately, she turned and vomited into the back corner of the cage, snot and tears mixing in as if she were a little toddler sick with polar-flu again.  When she was done, she wiped at her mouth and nose with the back of her arm, hiccuping and shuddering.

He always told her that he was Tarrlok Sulukson, but it had been Tarrlok Yakoneson fucking her, leaving his seed in her, and oh  _spirits_ , they had never even taken precautions.  She could have become pregnant by him, carrying more natural bloodbenders inside of her until, like their father and grandfather, they emerged to twist human limbs like grotesque puppets.  Korra felt bile rise in her throat again, but she swallowed it back, pushing her hair back out of her eyes with shaking hands. 

 _How could I be so stupid.  How could I be so_ stupid.

She thought back on the old proverb her father always used to repeat to her when he was teaching her which peddlers in the market to avoid:  _“Those who lay with weasel-snakes, Korra mine, are like to get bit.”_  

“ _Huh_ ,” Korra laughed, but it was dry and tasteless.  “Lay with a weasel-snake, all right.”

In any other context the pun would have struck her as humorous, but now she was too drained, and the thought of all the hours lounging in Tarrlok’s bed, the way she had grown so deeply accustomed to the feeling of him inside of her, only produced a deep, throbbing ache in the middle of her chest.

And now, with her new knowledge, she’d have to use Tarrlok’s own weapons against him.  The idea terrified her – would he even fall for verbal manipulation? – but she could think of no alternative.  Any false move, any attempt to physically overpower him, and he’d have her in a bloodbending grip immediately. 

He may have disarmed her in other ways, but now she knew his secret.  If she revealed to him that she knew where he came from…well, she might be able to convince him to let her out.  He still wanted to get Amon as badly as she did.  That certainly hadn’t changed.  If she could persuade him that she wouldn’t hold his bloodbending against him, she could wait until the immediate Equalist threat was dealt with, and then bring him to justice.  She could even follow obediently along with all his plans until then to convince him of her change of heart.  She’d dance to his drum-beat if that’s what it took, weaving whatever lies she could.

—

It was a long time before Tarrlok returned, which gave Korra plenty of time to decide exactly what she would say.  She’d scripted out their entire conversation in her head: she would be as open as possible, admitting her knowledge and offering to make all well between the two of them.  This, of course, would include promises of following his lead in capturing Amon.

 _Make him believe it all meant something to you_ , she reminded herself, remembering his accusations.   _Make him believe that he hurt you when he said you were using him.  Make him believe you value him._

In a sense, it would be halfway true – what he’d said before he’d left had hit her in her core.  She realized that she really had, against her own better judgment, hoped he’d cared at least a  _little_  bit about her.  That he really had put at least  _some_ value on their times together.

 _And sure_ , she allowed,  _I was using him to relieve pressure, but he offered that release to me._ He’s _the one who approached_ me _about it, not the other way around.  And anyway, it’s not like I didn’t care about him at all!  I totally cared about him and his needs!  I did!_

_Didn’t I?_

But, then, she had never really asked him much about himself or how he was doing.  When she visited, she poured out her woes – about Mako, about the Fire Ferrets, about Airbending – while he sat and listened patiently to her, taking in all she was saying.  But she had to have asked him how his day was going.  She couldn’t remember any particular instance, but she was  _sure_  that she had to have done it…at least once.

 _All that aside_ , she told herself now, and firmly,  _he doesn’t believe you care.  You need to_ make _him believe you do.  Show him you understand what he’s going through._

Easier said than done.  The memory of her body twisting made her stomach knot up, and she could no longer picture his face without seeing the echo of Yakone. 

Despite her fears, though, she planned out what she was going to say carefully, rehearsing it over and over to herself as she waited.  Her mind kept drifting, and she’d suddenly find herself deep in a tangle of anxiety about whether or not Tenzin had figured things out yet.  Pushing those anxieties back was the hardest part, but she tried to keep her mind on track, anticipating all Tarrlok’s possible movements.

She almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the rumble of an engine pulling up and the slam of the front door.  Within seconds, she heard Tarrlok’s feet upon the stairs. 

“My life is a disaster now, thanks to you!” He spat out before she could even open her mouth.

 _Fuck_.

“What happened?” She asked, trying desperately to sound kind.  It didn’t work very well; her voice sounded strained and nearly accusatory.

“Your little friends found me out,” Tarrlok sneered, “so I guess I don’t have much of a choice anymore.  If the city doesn’t want me, she won’t have me.  I’m leaving tonight, and you’re coming along as hostage.”

Korra had almost begun to roll her eyes at his drama, but when he announced the last part of his plan, she nearly lost her cool entirely.

“Tarrlok,” she called out, “Tarrlok, listen.  We can still fix this.  There’s still a chance for you.  For  _us_.  I’ll explain everything.  I’ll make sure you don’t get into trouble, and we can take care of the Equalists together.  We’re a team, remember?  You were right all along – I should have kept working with you instead of leaving the task force.  We made a great team.  We really,  _really_  did, and I fucked it up.  I’m so sorry.  But please, it’s not too late to try again.  It’s  _not_.”  She was vomiting up whatever words came to her, nearly out of control, and she thought her heart might pound right out of her chest.  Tarrlok paused for a very long time, and she could feel the hammering of it in her ears as she waited, hanging on his silence like she was scaling a cliff wall.  Her heart was going to burst, she knew it.

“No, Korra,” he finally said, and his voice wasn’t angry anymore – just weary.  “There’s nothing left for me here anymore.  I though changing my patronym would bury my past, but everything catches up to us, doesn’t it?”  He sounded so tired, so  _sad_.  “The best I can do is to try to start over again.  That’s the best both of us can do.”

That did it.  What little control she had slipped away.  “I’m not fucking starting over!” She shrieked, jumping to her feet.  “I have nothing to start over from!  Your bullshit might have ruined your life, Tarrlok, but it sure as hell won’t ruin  _mine_!”

That was it – the opportunity Aang had afforded her was gone, smashed to the floor like fine porcelain.  So much for fighting Tarrlok with his own weapons – she was too clumsy, even now, after everything that had gone on.  He would always manage to rattle her cage before she could rattle his.

 _Well, at least I ruined his life, didn’t I?_   She thought grimly as she listened to him ascend the basement stairs once more.   _I guess I’ll just have to keep ruining it for as long as possible, wherever he tries to drag me._

“Amon!”

Korra’s head jerked up as she felt a bolt of ice go through her core.   _Amon, here?  No, no, no._ She strained to listen, and for a few moments there was only silence.

Then Tarrlok screamed, and Korra felt her bowels turn to water.

She nearly screamed when she heard Amon’s voice, but she bit her lip and kept silent as his men descended the stairs, their boots heavy on the brittle wood.

They never knew what hit them when they finally opened up the metal doors.

Korra flew up the stairs and through the main room of the cabin, her legs pumping furiously, screaming with the strain of sudden movement after hours upon hours of sitting in that box.  And then she burst out the door, and he was there, a dark shape in the bright white snow, loading a limp body into the back of Tarrlok’s Satomobile. 

Korra froze for a split second, looking at Tarrlok.

Looking at Amon.

Those pale, almond eyes turned towards her, staring back, cold as ice and stone and deep water.

Korra turned and fled.


	16. Chapter 16

Tarrlok awoke to strong hands guiding him up a long, dim flight of stairs that never seemed to end.  He didn’t fully begin to understand, though, until he was shoved into a corner and heard the screech of metal behind him.  He was on AirTempleIsland, he realized, in the massive pagoda that capped the island mountain.  No chance of escape, even if he had cared enough to try.

There was a pitcher of water in the corner, but he didn’t even try to bend.  Even from here, he could tell that the water was dead and flat.  No, not the water.   _Him_.  He was dead and flat and the  _qi_  was gone out of him like wind out of sail. 

He sat in a corner, as far away from the water pitcher as possible, and went away deep inside of himself.  Occasionally, he would come back, drawn up by a distant explosion or the flap of a pigeon’s wings as it flew through the window and up into the rafters. 

Eventually, he wasn’t able to stop the thoughts from gathering, no matter how deep he ran inside.  The thoughts were down there too, waiting.

 _Success isn’t everything_ , Mother would tell him.   _Be careful what you’re willing to sacrifice._

But she hadn’t understood.  Working in [the market](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/51703347120/with-benefits-16), buying and selling and trading – it was something he’d been  _good_  at.  And Yakone could never complain when Tarrlok brought home more [money](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/51703347120/with-benefits-16) each night.  Tarrlok, of course, had always needed to lie about what he’d made and put the rest away – otherwise Yakone would have spent every last cent on drink.  Still, Yakone had little bad to say when his only remaining son brought home such rich rewards, and Tarrlok had built up his own savings in private.  When his father had finally passed, Tarrlok had revealed the savings to his mother, but instead of being proud, her lips had gotten very thin and she hadn’t said anything at all.

_Is it really that important, son?  We have enough to live on._

It was true – they’d had more than enough.  But it had never  _been_  enough.  Once he’d tasted success, he could not stop, and soon he was deftly eliminating competitors and buying out broke vendors.  She just didn’t understand the rush of it, the thrill of sweet victory.  But so few did.  So few understood the subtleties that were needed, the artistry in a swift verbal dance.  With those deft tools, he’d become the most envied, admired, hated man in his village.

And yet, for all their hatred, they’d elected him as their representative in the capitol, and from there it had only been a few quick steps to a council seat in RepublicCity.

So many lauded him then – the youngest on the council, the smartest young man the City had ever seen.  But then, so many thought it he was born for it – or worse, that he’d gotten there by luck.  So few truly appreciated the hard work and the late nights it had taken him.  So few knew the physical toll of a constantly-aching back and quickly-failing eyesight, purchased by long hours at a desk by lamplight.  They preferred to think that some are just born for glory.

Like the Avatar.

He’d thought her to be a hard worker at first; she’d seemed so dedicated to improving herself and the lives of those around her.  But he saw her slouching at Task Force meetings and yawning during his debriefings and, though she assured him again and again that she was practicing her air-bending, she never did seem to make any progress.  Instead of working with him or with Tenzin, she played games and went out on dates. 

It was like she was just  _waiting_  for victory to be handed to her.  As if she could just sit around long enough and everything would come to her as easily as it had in the past.  He’d heard that she knew three of the four elements by the time she could walk.  It was only natural that things had come so easily to her and it had made him so  _maddeningly_  jealous.

And now the fate of the city was in her hands – at least, if Noatak hadn’t taken her bending yet.

Doomed.  All of it doomed, because of her.

No.  Because of  _him_.  That much was clear now.  It was because he’d tried to use her instead of push her.  Because he’d sat back and listened to her bullshit instead of encouraging her to pursue something higher.  She had been foolish and that had made her so  _terribly_  easy to manipulate that he hadn’t hesitated a single moment.  It had come so easily, putting her into his collection of tools with Saikhan and all the rest.  The temptation had been so strong he hadn’t so much as paused to question it.

And now the city was doomed, all because he’d spent his precious moments exploiting her instead of building her up.

He remembered his mother’s face, lips tight and eyes full of sadness.  He couldn’t bear to imagine how sad she must be now, watching from the Spirit World as he’d drowned a little girl – a  _little girl_ , spirits be good – in her own self-doubt instead of pulling her to her feet as he ought to have done.

And now he had lost his beloved city.  The city he’d poured his heart and soul into for nearly a decade.  Lost. 

But he deserved that, he knew now.  He deserved to have his bending taken away, too.  He deserved even worse.  No doubt he would be hounded in the next life for treating the Avatar like he had. 

It really was all very poetic, he decided.  Run away from his father’s plans, only to end up doing more damage to the Avatar than Yakone had probably ever dreamed of.  Perhaps Yakone would even have been  _proud_  of his son for fucking the Avatar while destroying her from the inside out.  It probably would have made the old drunk laugh.

Well, it hadn’t been just him.  He might have helped to devastate her self-confidence and distract her from her life mission, but now Noatak was there to deliver the final blow and ruin her totally.  It wasn’t killing – no, it was much sweeter than that.  Korra would lose her bending the same way Yakone had lost his, so many years ago.  Maybe Yakone had never much liked his younger son, but having two worked out well in the end: one son to bring the Avatar to her knees, the other to rob her of all that remained of her worth. 

All this time running, all this time building himself up and making himself glorious, and he really was still just the tool that had been honed for revenge so many years ago. 

_Father must be so proud._

Tarrlok sank his head down onto his knees and drifted away again.

When he came back, he was dreaming.  Dreaming of her.  Her brown body stretched out across the clean white sheets, taut and quivering under his touch.  She had been so beautiful.  She had always been so beautiful, even when she was covered in sweat or when her eyes were swollen and red from crying.  He had never ceased to stare at her in wonder, every time she took her clothes off for him.  She hadn’t noticed, of course, but he’d drank in the sight of her, and now all he could dream of was pressing himself down upon her, inside of her, feeling her surrounding him and hearing her cry out his name.

She had once complained to him of how beautiful Asami Sato was, but he’d seen Asami Sato, and Korra was better – strong and willful as a narrow river.  Korra would  _always_  be better.  That much had never been a lie.

“Tarrlok,” he heard her say, and he lifted his head out of sleep and looked up to see her standing there in the doorway, her blue eyes wide and hair sticking to her sweaty forehead.

“Korra.”

—

She thought she knew him the first time, when they rolled together under the sheets, laughing and fucking and exploring one another.  She’d known everything that made him jerk and draw in his breath with little gasps and everything that made his cock twitch under her fingers and everything that made his eyes roll to the ceiling as he groaned out her name.

She’d been proven wrong the first time, and now she’d been proven wrong again.  The weasel-snake, the bloodbender, the Yakonesson who’d shared her bed, who’d plotted to break her even as he’d rode her and who’d fucked with her mind even as he’d thrust himself into her – she did not know him in the least.  She’d  _never_  known him.

And now, he was a shrunken, broken thing, and she realized, for the first time, that she was seeing the real Tarrlok.  The Tarrlok who had been hidden so deep that even Tarrlok himself had forgotten him.  The Tarrlok whose heart was flayed open like a skinned polar-leopard. 

Flayed open for her benefit.

And  _apologetic_.

That was who broke her heart, in the end.  The Tarrlok who was apologizing for everything.  For  _everything_.  Mako, standing beside her, obviously thought it was only apologies for the last few days.  But Tarrlok met Korra’s eyes and she knew just what he was sorry for.

It was worse when she realized that  _she_  wasn’t sorry.  Sorry, maybe, for the harsh words and the quick judgments and the violence.  But not sorry for everything else…even if he was.  Even if she had been using him for a vacation, like he’d said.  She searched deep within herself and found that there was no regret there, and the guilt of it twisted in her stomach like a coiling snake.

 “We should go,” Mako said, putting one gentle hand on her shoulder and gesturing to the trapdoor. 

“You go on,” Korra replied, and when Mako looked at her in confusion, she forced a reassuring smile.  “Just wait for me at the bottom of the trapdoor.  I’ll be right down, okay?”

Mako still looked confused, but he nodded.  “Yeah, okay.  See you down there.”

When he was gone, Korra turned back to the cage.  She had to leave him with something.  Anything.

“Tarrlok,” she crouched down in front of the bars, putting her face as close in between as she could, “I’m going to go beat Amon, and I’ll come back here and get you after that.  I promise.  And then…and then…,” (he just looked so  _broken_ ) “…and then I’ll give you…give you the  _best_  blow job you’ve ever had.”  She forced her face to break into a big, daring grin, but it was like trying to metal-bend titanium.  He stared back at her, his eyes empty and ringed in dark circles.

“I promise,” she said, growing desperate, struggling to keep the smile on her face, fighting back against the strange stinging that had begun in her eyes. “It’ll ruin your life, it’ll be so amazing.  I  _promise_.”

She reached a hand through the bars, hoping he would grasp on to it, give her one last squeeze for good luck.

 _Just please, Tarrlok_ , she wanted to beg,  _smile at me like before_.   _Tell me I’m scheming and wild and up to no good.  Laugh at my vulgarity again.  Please._

“Please,” she whispered out loud, and her voice hitched in her throat.

Nothing.  He just gazed at her.  All of his old humor, the cunning twinkle in his eyes – all of it was gone.  Broken.  Korra felt something in her shatter, and she dropped her hand back down to her side, closing her eyes briefly to push back the tears she felt welling up.

Finally he spoke, and his voice was hoarse and hollow.

 “Is he yours yet?” His eyes flicked to the trapdoor, where Mako had already descended.

“I…I don’t know,” she whispered, her voice choking.

“And have you defeated Amon yet?”

Why was he asking her something so obvious?  “No.”  She shook her head, irritated now, and weary.

This time the corners of Tarrlok’s mouth did turn up in a feeble smile. “Then go, child.  Go and conquer.”

Something in her chest clenched.  She reached through the bars once again, beckoning him to come closer, hoping for that one last kiss that was always supposed to happen like in comic books and on the radio.  He shook his head.  Korra swallowed, set her jaw, and nodded.

“I’ll come back and get you,” she said softly, trying to catch his eyes as began to descend the ladder, but she could hardly see his face in the shadows.  “I promise.”  Closing the trap door behind her, she went down to join Mako.

She kept her promise.  She did come back.  But the cell door stood ajar, and the tower room was vacant except for a few pigeons that had come through the window.

—

“The two of us together again!  There will be  _nothing_  we can’t do!”

“Yes, Noatak.”

A storage unit was opened up in front of him, filled with piles of Sato’s mass-produced gloves.  The gas tank was to his right.  He reached over, slowly and gently twisting off the cap.

His brother stood in the front of the boat, not even looking back at him.

“Noatak!” His brother replied, sounding almost amused.  “I’d almost forgotten the sound of my own name!”

Still, after all this time, so willing to trust when trusting was preferable.  So much like Korra.

 _Korra_ , he thought tiredly.   _You dumb little ass_.  Even after everything that had happened, she’d failed. 

It came to him that he didn’t even know if she was still alive.

 _She has to be_ , he decided, and realized dully that he still had faith in her.

But nothing for it.  Korra was back at RepublicCity, and he could see the future, clear as a photograph, stretching out before him on the ocean.  Go out and start new lives, have new sons, train new bloodbenders.

All of this, all over again.  More and more Yakones, spilled out into the world like the blood they corrupted.

Well, it fell to him.  Korra had failed, and it was all on him now.

He tried to feel sorry about it, to feel sad about it.  It didn’t work.  There was no reason to be sorry for ending this circle-dance, one that would just keep spinning round and round until the world was full of Yakones.  No reason to be sad about stopping that, not ever.

 _Thank the heavens_ , he wanted to say, looking at the back of his brother’s head,  _you and I will have no sons._

Tarrlok reached down and took a glove from the box.

“It’ll be just like the good old days.”


	17. Epilogue

The news came on a rainy Monday when everyone was gathered at the dining room table for lunch.  Korra, Tenzin and the children had been descending the mountain to the main hall, and the sky had opened up so suddenly that Korra had needed to enclose all of them in a protective bubble to keep them from getting completely drenched.  By the time they’d sat down to lunch, though, the flash storm had diminished into a slow drizzle.

By the time one of the acolytes came in with the telegram, it had stopped entirely.

The family went quiet as Tenzin read, his brow darkening.  After a long pause, he set the paper down on the table and stood.  “Korra,” he said softly, “come with me.  There’s been news.”

“What is it?” She asked warily, but Tenzin simply shook his head and motioned for her to follow him.

Outside the dining room, he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, his face pensive and eyes hesitant.  “Korra, there’s just been word from the Fire Nation Navy.  They found the missing Equalist boat, ruined and washed up on one of the outer[islands](http://bai-xue88.tumblr.com/post/61375296622/with-benefits-epilogue).  It looks as if there was an explosion in the gas tank.  And…and two bodies.  They’ve been identified as Amon and Councilman Tarrlok.  It appears Tarrlok used an Equalist glove to blow up the boat.”

Korra tried to breathe.  She couldn’t.

“I’m sorry, Korra.  I know you wanted to bring Amon to justice yourself.  I just thought I should tell you in private first, before anyone else.”

Korra looked out the window.  A small shaft of sunlight had broken through the thick cloud cover, and drops of water were glistening on the windowpane.

“I need to…,” she began, but trailed off.  Her tongue felt thick in her mouth and her voice seemed to be very, very far away.  “I need….”

“Are you okay, Korra?”

She tried to shake her head, but her feet were already moving toward the door, so she didn’t bother. 

“Korra!”  She heard Tenzin call out behind her, but then the door slammed between them and she was running as fast as she could, her legs pumping on the slick, wet earth, putting as much distance as possible between her and Tenzin and the telegram.  Finally, the land ran out, and she stood and looked out at the sea and didn’t know what to do and so she screamed loud and long and hard and began grabbing rocks off the ground, one after the other, and throwing them as hard as possible at the water.

“Korra?”

She spun around.  Pema was standing there, plump and tired from her recent pregnancy, concern lining her face.

“Sorry,” Korra muttered.  “Sorry, I…I shouldn’t have run out.  I’m sorry.”

Pema shook her head.  “Don’t apologize, Korra.  We all know how frustrated and angry you must be.  Amon should have been brought to justice.”

“That’s not it,” Korra replied flatly.  Something had broken inside of her and all the care had flushed out of her like water from a dam breach.  “That’s not it.”

Pema blinked in surprise.  “No?  But I thought….”

“I thought Tarrlok was still alive.  That’s it.  I just….I thought he was still alive.”  One last bit of anger welled up from her stomach, and Korra turned and threw one last rock off the cliff.

“Tarrlok?”

“Yeah.”  Her arms were sore.  She walked over to a small boulder and sat down, staring out at the clouds rolling over the sea.

Pema stood and looked at her for a very long time before coming over and sitting down next to her.  She put a hand on Korra’s.

“How long were you together?”  Pema finally asked, her voice soft and sad.

“It was never…never ‘together.’  Not like me and Mako.  We just were…something.  I don’t know.  It was just something we did.”

“But you cared for each other?”

“No.  Maybe.  I don’t….I don’t want to think about what he felt.  But he helped me escape.  All I wanted to do was be the Avatar and I couldn’t do it and he helped.”

Pema began to rub her back, and it reminded Korra so much of her mother that she nearly burst into tears right there, but she swallowed them back. 

“I could just forget about everything when we were fu…when we were together,” she continued.  “He picked up all my slack.  He knew how weak I secretly felt and he picked it all up.”

And if he hadn’t gone to the lengths that he did –

 _so willing to go to extremes_  –

Korra suddenly found herself sobbing - big guttural sobs that wracked her entire body.

“If I- if I had only – he a-asked me to get Amon for h-him and I – I didn’t!” She sobbed.  She could feel mucus streaming from her nose, mixing with her tears.  “If I did, T-Tarrlok wouldn’t have had to - he would still be - if I had just been _stronger_!”

“Korra, you tried as hard as you could.  We all know you did.  No one is blaming you for not trying.”

Korra shook her head hard.  “That’s not an excuse!  I….” She paused, took a deep shuddering breath, and continued.  “When he disappeared…I just thought he’d run away like his brother.  I was so angry at him.  After all he did for me, after all he said to me, I thought maybe he was just a coward after all and I decided I wouldn’t even  _bother_  looking for him if he was gonna disappear like that.  And all that time…all that time he could have been lying on a beach somewhere, dying, because of  _me_ ….”

“Stop,” Pema said, her normally gentle voice firm and sharp as Lin Beifong’s.  “ _Stop_.  Stop conjecturing, and stop blaming yourself.  You could not have stopped what he chose to do with his life.  It is  _not_  your fault.”

Korra scrubbed at her eyes.  “It’s just…I’m so weak.  I’ve pretended to be strong, all this time, but in the end I couldn’t even finish off Amon.  The only thing that saved me was Avatar Aang.  If not for him, I’d be useless.”

“Korra, it’s okay to be weak sometimes.  It’s okay to lean on others when you need strength.  Not even the Avatar can carry every human life on her shoulders at all times, no matter how hard she tries.”

“But what happens when I can’t?  What do I do?”

Pema smiled sadly at Korra, and reached up to cup her cheek.  “Then it’s okay to mourn for them.”

So Korra clasped her arms around Pema’s neck, as tightly as if Pema were her own mother, and wept like she did as a little girl.  She wept for the sex and the fights and Tarrlok’s laughter, and when she was done, she felt a little more like herself.

**End**


End file.
